


The Glitch (Dream SMP)

by Vellichorist



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, I Don't Know how to Trigger Warn, Original Character(s), Trapped Inside of a Video Game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:46:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28844043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vellichorist/pseuds/Vellichorist
Summary: It was a normal day on the Dream SMP. There was an unusually large number of people online, sure, but otherwise, nothing was off.All at once, their screens flickered.The next moment, they wake up.They're inside of Minecraft.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 85
Kudos: 784





	1. The Awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some words in this fic that are italicized in the original (I prewrite on google docs) but I'm still figuring out how to make them italicized on Archive.
> 
> ALSO- there will NOT be any shipping at all in this fic

Dream’s head hurt.

Everything hurt. His eyes felt like they had been staring at a strobe light for an hour, and there was a loud ringing in his ears. Also an odd tingling sensation all over his skin. Like when your leg falls asleep, and it’s waking up.

In a moment, the feeling started to fade. So did the ringing and the pain in his eyes. After about two minutes, Dream was feeling a lot better.

He opened his eyes to see a bright blue sky, dotted with clouds.

Well, that wasn’t a normal thing to see when you wake up.

Dream sat up suddenly, too suddenly, and he almost fell back down. His arms were weak. He took a second with his eyes closed and took a breath. He was definitely not expecting to see what he did when he opened them again.

Dream was sitting on soft grass, seemingly out in the middle of nowhere. There were trees and grass everywhere, and large hills dotted around the landscape. A wooden path stretched horizontally in front of him, slightly raised up from the ground. There were buildings scattered around, of all shapes and sizes: tall stone towers, low wooden buildings, and others even more odd. 

A possibility sparked to life in his mind, but Dream pushed it back. It was strange, but there was no way it was true. It was just impossible. He was not on the Dream SMP. Now he felt like an idiot just considering that.

Dream stood up and turned around. If he was in the SMP (which, he had to admit, the area did look a lot like his server) he would be in the grass beside the Prime Path. Everything around him looked awfully familiar, like the house carved into the hill to his left with a sign that said ‘The Embassy’. The path ahead of him would lead to L’Manburg, to his right would be the newly-rebuilt community house, and to his left Church Prime and other things.

Dream laughed out loud: a short, slightly delusional sound. He truly felt like an idiot. But… then where was he? He had a sudden, alarming realization that he had no other clue, at all, where he was. He became panicked for a moment, looking back and forth to try to see anything familiar. But all he saw were the buildings he knew too well and landmarks of his server. His Minecraft server.

Dream tried to remember back to what had happened.

He’d been sitting at his desk, playing Minecraft on his SMP. His screen had started glitching; flickering. His hearts would disappear for a second, then his armor bar, then his hotbar. The screen suddenly flashed completely white, and then… then…

Then he woke up here.

Well, that didn’t explain anything.

It took Dream a moment to notice that something was off. The trees just didn’t… look right. Then he realized what was wrong. Everything looked... drawn. As through an artist had crafted the world around him. Everything from the grass to the clouds was like this. It was weird, but also beautiful, too, in a way. Dream spent a minute just looking around, intrigued at how everything looked. 

He held up his hand, curious to see if he was like this too. He was, but he noticed that he was wearing black fingerless gloves on his hands. When Dream looked down at himself, he saw a bright, lime-green hoodie, dark-grey pants, and black shoes. He had a sudden idea and rached up to his face, where his hand hit something hard. He felt around it and sure enough- he was wearing a mask. He felt for the strap and lifted it off, staring at the wide black smile painted on a white background. 

With growing confusion and dawning horror, Dream looked around once more. The area was similar to the Dream SMP, almost too similar. Too similar not to be real. But it was impossible, just impossible. 

Feeling oddly exposed, Dream put his mask back on. It didn’t obscure his vision at all, surprisingly, so what was the harm in wearing it? 

If he was truly on his own server, inside of Minecraft, then that brought him to another problem: how was he supposed to get back? Back to… reality? The real world? Dream didn’t know. Heck, he didn’t even know how he got here in the first place. 

Dream had a thought. If he was here, and here was really his server, then other people would be too. But how many people? All of them on the SMP? Or just some of them? The people who were online at the time, maybe? Dream had many questions, but no one to answer them. 

Yet.

“Hello?!” Dream called. He was half expecting to suddenly jolt awake and be back where he was; maybe he had fallen asleep at his computer and was having a very weird and realistic dream. He still felt a little stupid beliveing he was inside of a video game, but it was the best option he could think of, so he would just go with it for now.

Something moved to his right and made Dream jump, but it was just a chicken. Just a chicken, on a server in a video game that someone was trapped inside of. It tilted its head to stare at him with a beady black eye and ruffled its feathers.

Then Dream saw something else move, even farther to his right. It was just for a second, but he could’ve sworn he saw something that looked like a person. He turned towards it and saw someone move along the path, away from Dream, towards where the community house would be.

Dream hesitated for just a moment, then started off towards the figure. His pace quickened until he was running, and he realized just how fast he was. He hadn’t been this quick before, had he?

Dream stopped right outside the community house. He heard, rather than saw, two people frantically arguing inside.

“Well what are we going to do about it?!”

“I don’t know! Get out of the game!”

“How?!”

“I DON’T KNOW!”

Dream knew that yelling all too well. 

“George? Sapnap?”

\-------- ~~~ --------

There was darkness. Cool, black nothingness all around. A senseless void, like the night sky without stars. There was quiet. There was peace. And then there was that weird, tickly feeling on his skin, too.

Wilbur was dragged out of unconsciousness. He didn’t know why, at first, everything seemed completely normal. Like he was waking up. Oh, but he wasn’t breathing.

His eyes snapped open, and Wilbur frantically tried to take a breath, to get air into his lungs, to generally avoid suffocating. But he couldn’t. Wilbur panicked and tried to do something, something or he was sure he would die. He ended up making a sound that was half coughing, half choking. 

“Help…” Wilbur was expecting his voice to be quiet or rough from the lack of air he was inhaling, but it just sounded like his normal voice, if somewhat more pathetic.

Wilbur slowly realized that he wasn’t dying of asphyxiation, in fact, he felt just fine. He kept trying to take a breath, involuntarily, and kept failing at the simplest thing that he normally did on a constant basis.

Wilbur lay there, just trying to get used to not needing to breathe. Which led to an arguably important question: What was happening? Why was he failing so badly at breathing? Was he dead?

Wilbur realized that he was looking up at something green, white, and blue. After a moment, he regained his panic-scattered thoughts and made sense of what he was seeing: a tree branch, snow, and the sky.

Wilbur’s mind kept wandering back to the fact that he wasn’t breathing, and that he should be dead by now (if he wasn’t already). It was making it very hard to focus. 

It was somewhat unsatisfactory: not being able to breathe. He felt uneasy; incomplete. But Wilbur could still talk; he had found that out after whispering “What the fudge” under his breath. His breath, which he didn’t have anymore.

Was it just his delusional thoughts, or was his voice slightly echoey?

Wilbur looked at the scene above him again. The tree branch was covered in dark-green needles, which were in turn covered in a thick layer of snow.

He sat up, and was met with another similar scene- a forest of tall evergreen trees, their branches drooping with the weight of the snow. Snow covered everything; half of what Wilbur could see was white. He was sitting in - big surprise - snow. Something red shot through the trees, adding a bright spot of color in its wake. It was some kind of bird, but it disappeared before Wilbur could get a good look at it.

As Wilbur looked around, extremely confused, his vision suddenly just… faded.

All the colors went grayscale. It was like Wilbur was watching through an old television- everything was in black and white. Waves of sudden alarm hit Wilbur, but he was distracted by the bird again. It was no longer red. It was… blue. A dark blue streak, flying through the grey trees and still-white snow. 

All of Wilbur’s thoughts spaced out for a moment, then stopped completely, then started back up again, but differently. It was like… his personality changed- all of a sudden. Now, his thoughts were completely mellow and a little bit… lost. A slow realization dawned on Ghostbur that something was wrong; that he didn’t belong where he was. But confusion was the only emotion triggered, not fear or panic, just quiet confusion and a little bit of uneasiness.

As soon as these strange things happened, they stopped. Everything went back to the way it was before: the color came back to the world, and his thoughts went normal. Wilbur blinked, once, and then shivered violently, trying to clear the memory from his mind. What had happened- it wasn’t normal. It was so unsettling that Wilbur absolutely hated it and never wanted it to happen again. His re-organized thoughts spun onto the tack of ‘What the fudge was that?’

He took a moment to gather his nerves and thoughts and calm down. Whatever had happened to him hadn’t happened again in the few minutes that had passed, and Wilbur tried and failed to convince himself that it had been a one-time thing.

In truth, he didn’t know. He didn’t know anything at all, like where he was and what had just happened and why he couldn’t breathe. Fear dawned on Wilbur and he realized how much the Event had scared him. He was truly lost and seemingly alone in the middle of a cold, snowy forest of spruce trees and red (blue?) birds.

Was he actually cold? When he thought about it, he actually wasn’t at all. He should be freezing, even in, what, (Wilbur looked down at himself) a yellow sweater and…

His thoughts stopped yet again, but this time from surprise. He was looking down at himself, and he was… translucent? Wilbur could see through himself to the snow beneath him.

Wilbur literally jumped and immediately stood up, or at least tried to. He did it how he would usually get up from a sitting position: basically, he put his hands behind himself and pulled his legs closer, then pushed off and ended up standing. But he didn’t stand. It was as though his legs didn’t connect with the ground.

Wilbur gasped out of shock at both things, but it came out as another choking noise that caught in his throat, as a gasp required intake of air. There had been way too many shocking things in the little time since he had woken up. First, he couldn’t breathe, then he was in an unfamiliar place, then the fading and odd thoughts, and now, him being translucent and the inability to stand up.

What was happening?

\-------- ~~~ --------

Again, there was quiet, albeit the birdsong that served as a pleasant background noise. A groan of pain cut through the otherwise peaceful forest scene, causing the birds to pause their song, briefly, before continuing on again.

The unpleasant noise had come from a player sprawled in the grass. BadBoyHalo was waking up, but the splitting headache that sent pain in throbbing waves through his head made it hard to form coherent thoughts.

Eventually, the headache subsided, although slowly. Enough, at least, for Bad to open his eyes to find himself facedown in the dirt of a bright, green forest of what he assumed to be birch and oak trees, intersected with the occasional small rock or fallen log. There was a faint but steady sound of water somewhere to Bad’s left, and the colorful forms of birds dashed through the trees, while other small animals scurried somewhere in the undergrowth. 

All in all, it was a beautiful sight. It left Bad speechless, yet not because of its beauty, but because it was definitely not where he had been beforehand.

Bad, confused and a little frightened, looked around. At one point he looked straight upwards, to a break in the canopy above him, and straight to the blindingly bright sun. This did not help the headache that was still in the back of his mind, and he reached up to rub his face to try to make the pain go away, when his hand froze in front of his eyes. 

“What?”

His hand was black. Like the black of coal in Minecraft. His sleeve was also black, lined with bright red. He looked down at his shirt. It was the black and red of his sleeve, crossed by a leather strap, and horribly familiar.

“Wait… no, that can’t be right. I’m not…”

Bad stood up… and promptly fell back down again. Not only were his legs shaky and weak, but his head started spinning as soon as he moved. He tried again, more slowly, and was able to stay standing - barely. Bad was extremely disoriented, and he started feeling faint to the point where he had to sit back down. He was shaking just from the effort.

After a few more tries, Bad finally was able to stand up, but he still swayed a little when he tried to walk. He slowly but surely started heading towards the sound of water. He came upon a narrow creek trickling through the forest. There was a point along the stream where the water stopped and flowed into a small pool. Bad went over to this to look at his reflection. 

Bad saw a black face with a shocked expression staring back at him. A black hood rimmed with red came up over his head, but what caught Bad’s attention first was his eyes. Pure white eyes; against their dark background, they seemed to glow.

Bad looked like he did in his fanart- like his Minecraft skin.

He backed away from the stream, confusion warring with panic in his head. This wasn’t- no, it couldn’t- no, he-

Bad stopped and closed his eyes. He needed to get his bearings or he might never figure this out. He took a moment and let his headache completely fade, trying to stay calm and not panic, although he wasn’t sure how good of a job he was doing. He listened to the birdsong, thankful for the distraction as he cleared his frantic thoughts.

Bad let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and considered the possibilities. His first thought had been that he had somehow gotten himself lost in the woods, but that was a little far-fetched, considering he had been… he’d been…

What had he been doing?

Bad tried to think of the last thing he could remember… but he couldn’t find any one specific memory. 

He didn’t have amnesia or anything like that, no, Bad could remember his life and his career on Youtube and everything along those lines, and he could remember his friends like Dream and Skeppy. He just couldn’t remember what he had been doing last. 

Panic started to rise again and it took all of his willpower to calm down. He didn’t know why he was so jumpy; maybe it was because of the sudden shock of waking up somewhere unfamiliar, or maybe it was because he was alone, with no one else in sight. Or the fact that his head was still a little dizzy, and maybe he wasn’t getting enough oxygen or something like that.

Bad shifted on his feet and felt something else shift against his back. He reached around to feel what it was and was met with what felt like the handle of something. Bad pulled on it, and after a few tries he was able to pull it free from whatever was securing it to his back.

A gleaming sword was in his hand, waves of purple shimmering across it’s red-purple-gray surface. 

“What?” Bad said again. This was impossible. He wasn’t… he couldn’t be inside of Minecraft. That was ludacris. But what else explained the way he looked and the netherite weapon he was holding?

Bad examined the sword, being far too careful with it to avoid stabbing himself. It did in fact look like it was made out of netherite, with a wickedly sharp edge and otherwise smooth surface. It had been in a leather sheath strapped to his back, which was secured by the strap across his front.

After a few more moments, Bad decided to take an experimental swing with the sword. It sliced neatly through the air. He tried it on a low-hanging tree branch: chopping the branch nearly in half. 

He noticed the painting-like look of the world, almost suddenly, after glancing around in confusion for a moment. He too took a minute to look around at everything: the sword (which he had decided must have been his, if it was strapped to his back), the leaves, the water in the creek. It almost seemed to make the forest even more beautiful than it would have been before.

Bad stopped. Had he just heard something? 

There it was again: a very faint noise, as though it was far away. It almost sounded like… someone calling out.

“Hello?” Bad shouted back. If it truly was someone, then they would surely hear him and call back.

Sure enough, whoever it was called back, but said something different than before. They were too far away for Bad to make out who it was, their yells barely audible. But that didn’t stop Bad from running towards their voice, over the creek and through the forest. He kept calling, so whoever was would call back and he could follow their voice.

Bad was so focused on the prospect of another person that he didn’t notice how fast he was running, even on still-shaky legs. So it was reasonable that he didn’t notice that root or rock or whatever it was that his foot caught on and sent him sprawling back down into the dirt.

Bad flung his hands out in front of him instinctively to catch himself, so he saw them as they briefly flashed red when he hit the ground. He could taste blood in his mouth where he had bitten his tongue. It took Bad a second to catch his breath and realize that he had seen himself take damage, which further confirmed his theory about Minecraft.

Bad thought briefly about his hearts and then realized that he knew he had lost half of one. He just… knew. He could form a mental picture of his health bar.

Bad didn’t dwell on this very long. He grabbed his sword from the ground where he had dropped it and set off again, this time watching his steps more carefully. He could start to see buildings rising above the trees, and he was close enough to hear what the person was saying.

“Hello?”

Bad gasped as he recognized the voice. He would know it from anywhere.

“Skeppy!”

\-------- ~~~ --------

On the Dream SMP, sixteen pairs of eyes open at the same time. Sixteen people, now players, find themselves inside of Minecraft.

They are scattered all around the server, with no clue how they got to be there or how to get out. They will have to survive the night, find each other, and form a plan to get back to the Real World. But, most importantly, figure out how this new world, so familiar yet not, works.

Although, unbeknownst to them, they will have help.

On a server completely separate from the Dream SMP, another pair of eyes opened. But this person was different from the other players. They knew where they were, how they got there, and how to get out.

Well, mostly.


	2. Rough Risings

The first thing Tommy noticed was the heat. The oppressive, overbearing heat that instantly made him uncomfortable.

He cracked his eyes open just enough to see the dark red blur above him. It took a moment for Tommy to simply wake up- he was tired. By the time he had gotten his eyes fully opened, he had realized that he was not in a normal place.

Not only that, but he was incredibly sore. Like, everywhere. There was a horrible prickly feeling all over his skin, and to make it worse, that combined with the heat, tiredness, and soreness made Tommy feel like complete crap. 

Tommy was definitely not having a good time, and he was on the verge of panic at the fact that he was in a tunnel of dark red rock that was not familiar and not normal whatsoever. The acclaimed claustrophobia he had started to sink in, which was also odd, since he had mostly been joking with that with his friends and hadn’t had much trouble with that before.

“Where the fudge am I?” Tommy whispered under his breath. He also wondered how he had gotten there. Last he could remember he had been streaming Minecraft, like normally. Now he was here… wherever here was.

He got to his feet and did the one logical thing he could think of: follow the tunnel. He immediately came to a dead end on one side, so he backtracked and followed it the other way. The prickly feeling and soreness faded while he walked, but the heat was still there, and it seemed to be literally coming from the walls. 

The tunnel curved slightly upward, and suddenly opened outward. Tommy couldn’t help but gasp at the enormous cavern before him, dripping with fiery-orange lava and studded with red tree-like things.

Directly in front of Tommy, with its back to him, was a huge beast. Tommy didn’t get a good look at it, because he backed into the tunnel again as soon as he saw it. He prayed that the thing hadn’t seen him or heard him gasp, because he definitely didn’t want whatever it was to chase him down the dead-ended tunnel.

Something clicked in Tommy’s head, connected to the fact that he had been streaming in the Nether and the area around him looked incredibly similar to the hellscape of Minecraft.

Had the beast been a hoglin? Tommy felt like a total idiot for thinking that he was inside of Minecraft, but- no, no he wasn’t inside of a video game. That wasn’t- no, that wasn’t happening. 

But as he thought about it, he noticed a compass on a string around his neck. The red needle was spinning around randomly inside, but what caught Tommy’s eye first was the words written where ‘North’ should be. Instead of the direction, though, it said ‘Your Tubbo’ which made Tommy’s breath catch in his throat as he actually considered the possibility of being inside of Minecraft. Minecraft, for fuck’s sake.

Well, wherever he was, he had to get past the thing guarding the tunnel (Tommy didn’t yet want to call it a hoglin, even though the evidence was convincing). He peered around the corner and saw that it still had its back to him. If he could just sneak behind it and edge around it, maybe he could get past without being seen. Maybe. He wasn’t confident in his plan, but he didn’t have a better one than to sit in the tunnel (or cave?) for eternity. 

So he did just that, snuck behind the monster, heart pounding. It was huge, holy shit. He didn’t have any trouble, though, until he tried to slip past it.

It snorted suddenly, making Tommy jerk as he tried not to scream, and turned straight towards him, cloudy white eyes staring at Tommy. Tommy gave up stealth and bolted out of there, with the hoglin in close pursuit, judging from the thumps and grunting sounds behind him.

Tommy literally shrieked when he glanced behind him- the hoglin was right there behind him, tusks gleaming and ready to kill him. He saw with sudden panic that there was a steep wall of red stone (netherrack?) in front of him. In a moment of sudden panic Tommy jumped as high as he could and hit the top edge, grabbing fistfulls of coarse red grass to avoid slipping and gasping in fright as the hoglin crashed into the wall below him, just missing his feet as he pulled them up. He frantically heaved himself over the edge, his mind playing scenes of how that move could have gone completely wrong.

The hoglin snorted below him, bringing Tommy back to focus. The impact of hitting the wall must have jarred the beast, because it turned to stumble off and away.

Tommy sighed and relief washed over him so thoroughly that he lay down on the grass (which wasn’t very comfortable; it poked him in the back and wasn’t very soft) and closed his eyes. He almost immediately opened them again, reminding himself that he was in the Nether, literal hell, and had to be alert.

Tommy had apparently decided, sometime during the hoglin chase, that he was indeed inside of Minecraft, but he was too worn out by simply running that he didn’t bother disagreeing with himself.

Tommy took a moment to look at his surroundings. He was in what seemed to be a crimson forest, which was terrible luck, since hoglins and piglins spawned here by the dozens. Huge, red mushrooms rose up to various heights around him, but they were more like trees than fungus. The ground was covered with a layer of the coarse grass and dotted with larger shrubs and smaller versions of the fungus-trees. The space above him, way, way above him, was the same dark red netherrack of pretty much everything else except the veins of lava that flowed and pooled across the landscape, ending up in the huge lake that covered the lowest layer of the realm.

The heat was still there, but ever so slightly less present now that Tommy was in the open. There was no wind; nothing at all to provide even the slightest relief from the ghastly temperature. 

Speaking of ghasts, Tommy saw one floating in the air, high above him. Too high to notice him, Tommy hoped, but he continued onwards anyway.

Tommy realized that he had no actual plan for what he was going to do after getting past the hoglin. He almost regretted leaving the tunnel, because now anything and everything could find and kill him. Shit, he could die just by one wrong step off the edge and into the lava. 

Tommy heard a snort somewhere ahead of him and ducked behind the stem of a mushroom. He risked a glance around it and saw a group of piglins stationed just ahead. They were ugly creatures with pinkish skin and sickly white eyes. They were armed with loaded crossbows and sharp-edged golden swords. There were four, no, five of them, which was five too many for Tommy.

Tommy also noticed that there was a chest and an axe leaning against a mound of netherrack. The piglins were gathered in a circle around a fire pit, and the mushrooms were chopped down to form a small clearing. It looked like a small base camp, which confused Tommy, because piglin groups were supposed to be like hunting parties, wandering through the crimson forests looking for hoglins and players to kill, not setting up camps or apparently having extra weapons lying around.

The piglins were making various different noises, and Tommy thought it looked like they were having a conversation, which was stupid: piglins are just mobs, nothing more. Tommy frowned at his thought. They were mobs that could construct base camps and hunt in well-organized groups. Maybe things were different here than in normal Minecraft.

The piglins seemed to finish their conversation, one wearing black leather and a golden buckle (the leader?) made a gesture with its sword and started off away from the camp. They left their camp unguarded, all five had gone off following the first one.

An idea popped into Tommy’s head, and, granted, it was a stupid one. But for some reason, he decided to go on with it anyway. When he was sure the piglins were far enough away and not looking back, Tommy ran out from his spot behind the tree and into the camp, crouching down behind the chest to make sure he absolutely was not seen. Taking on a hoglin had been hard enough (he hadn’t even ‘taken it on’, instead simply ran for his life) and Tommy didn’t want to imagine what it would be like with five piglins.

He reached over and took the golden axe lying unused. Purple shimmered across it and words were engraved where the blade met the handle: Unbreaking |||. He opened the chest, wincing as it made a quiet creaking sound, but a glance over proved that the piglins had not heard it. Tommy peered inside the chest, which appeared to be full of junk: leather, blackstone, soul sand, nether bricks, empty glass bottles, and string, which seemed to be the basic items you could get from bartering.

He glanced back once again at the piglins. They had no idea that Tommy was even there. He dug through the items in the chest, but he didn’t see anything useful at all. He couldn’t risk grabbing something useless, he was already low on time, the piglins could come back any second.

Tommy didn’t know what he was thinking. This was a completely stupid play, even for him. What had he been thinking? The shock of what he was doing finally hit him. He was scared. Why, why had he done this? Maybe because he still thought that maybe this was all fake. Maybe it was a dream. A nightmare.

Tommy thought that he was in Minecraft, for frick’s sake. MINECRAFT. A VIDEO GAME! How stupid was he?

In his thoughts, Tommy foolishly let the lid of the chest drop shut. It made a snap as it closed, loud enough that it echoed horribly throughout the forest. Tommy froze. The piglins all turned to look back at him, straight at him, eyes boring into his soul. Minecraft or not, these beasts could still kill him. For a moment, both Tommy and the piglins just stood there. But then the lead piglin let out what Tommy could only describe as a war cry, and charged.

Tommy was out of there. Again, he bolted away, and again, his attacker followed him. A barrage of arrows sailed past Tommy, by some miracle avoiding him, although some just barely. The piglins were fast, just as fast as Tommy, but maybe it was because Tommy kept stumbling on the rough ground and nearly running straight into the mushroom stems, while the piglins seemed to know the area well. 

An arrow sailed right next to him, with just inches to spare his head. Tommy yelled something along the lines of “AAAH” and ducked down as another one passed right over him. The golden axe was still clutched in his hand, but Tommy didn’t have a clue how to fight, and he didn’t want to try when he was so badly outnumbered.

Suddenly, without warning, as Tommy dodged around a curtain of red vines, the ground dropped out from under him. He involuntarily shrieked with fear as he fell through the air, everything around him nothing but a blur. This was it, he’d fall down into the lava and burn to death.

The first to die.

Tommy suddenly hit something, and on instinct he held onto it. He dropped his axe so he could hang on; nothing mattered anymore besides not falling. He heard a squeal behind him and closed his eyes, bracing for the impact of an arrow. But when nothing happened, he risked opening them and saw what had saved him: weeping vines.

They were hanging from the ceiling, long, red vines that twisted and curled around each other. He was holding onto them with a death grip that turned his knuckles white. Tommy glanced downward, and found that there wasn’t lava below him, but solid ground that was still too far away to survive a fall. Tommy saw a broken crossbow strewn across the ground below him, which must have been the remnants of an unlucky piglin.

He couldn’t see to the ledge above him, but he did see the remaining four piglins lean over it to look down on him. One of them notched an arrow and shot at him, but Tommy was so entangled in the vines that the arrow couldn’t reach him. The piglins backed away from the cliff, but Tommy wasn’t sure if they gave up or were looking for another way down to him. 

Tommy thrashed around in the weeping vines until he had enough leverage to start sliding down to the ground far below. The twisting red plants were surprisingly hardy; more like bendy wood. Little orange flower-like things were growing from the vines, and when Tommy touched them, he got a sticky nectar or sap or whatnot on his hands. His arms were coated in it by the time he got to the netherrack floor, and there was no apparent way to rub it off quickly, so Tommy had to put up with it for now.

Tommy retrieved his golden axe from the ground where it had fallen and started off away from the piglin camp. He walked quickly, afraid he was being followed, until he came to a break in the trees where the landscape shifted to bare netherrack ground and another gigantic lava lake. Tommy had no choice but to continue through the nether wastes. The land turned to a large cliff beside him, leaving a narrow strip of land curving around the ocean of liquid fire. The heat coming off of the lava made it even hotter and Tommy was sweating when he emerged onto a larger strip of land.

The land went off in three directions: one way to the towering grey pillars of a basalt delta, the second to a bright blue warped forest, and the third continued the nether wastes. Tommy was debating which was to go when he saw the top of something poking over the blue mushroom-trees. 

Tommy chose the warped forest to get a closer look at the structure. As soon as he entered the shadow of the first tree he felt the heat drop down to a bearable level and breathed a sigh of relief. Golden axe in hand, Tommy prayed that he wasn’t discovering a bastion as he advanced forward.

The thing turned out not to be a black tower swarming with piglins; instead was the cracked frame of an obsidian portal. A gold block was set above the middle, framed with blackstone. If Tommy had to guess, he would say that it wasn’t the typical 4x5, instead a 5x5, which didn’t matter much to Tommy, except that it was only missing one piece of it’s obsidian, leaving an empty space right below the gold block.

There was a chest set beside the portal, and when Tommy went and opened it, luck was definitely in his favor for once. A single piece of obsidian lay in the bottom, partially covered by a piece of flint and a fire charge. 

There couldn’t have been better loot than that. Tommy took the piece of obsidian out and looked up at the missing space. The obsidian was small enough to fit in his hand, but based on how Minecraft worked, the block would get bigger once placed. He would have to jump to reach the center block place, but other than that it should be fairly simple. Tommy hopped up and reached towards the space, but he couldn’t touch it. He tried again, and this time the block disappeared from his hand and reappeared where he had been reaching- filling in the hole and completing the portal.

Tommy stopped for a moment out of surprise, but then got to his senses and went to get the fire charge from the chest. He wanted to get out of this hellscape as fast as possible, away from the heat and the piglins and the lava and-

A blood-curdling shriek pierced through the air, making Tommy jump a literal foot. He whirled around in time to see the fireball coming, see the ghast as nothing but a white blur above him, think about the four times he’d come close to death in the first minutes of waking up, and, acting on pure instinct, swung his axe around and felt it connect with the fireball, sending it sailing back to the monster that had conjured it, and heard the scream of death from the ghast as it flashed red and disappeared, dropping one single tear down to the lava below.

_TommyInnit has completed the challenge [Return to Sender]_

The text appeared in the corner of his vision, where he assumed chat would be, but Tommy didn’t process what he had just done for a good minute, instead collapsing against the side of the portal, sliding down until he was sitting with his back to the dark stone. His breathing was frantic and erratic; the shock of what he had just happened bearing down on him. One split-second too soon or too late would have killed him, simply killed him, in what must be an extremely painful way.

But… if this way Minecraft, did Tommy respawn? He decided immediately that he didn’t want to find out; better safe than sorry. Tommy got his bearings and shakily stood up, got the fire charge, and slammed it onto the bottom block of the portal. The fire flared briefly, but then was replaced with a swirling purple vortex that filled the inside of the obsidian frame. Particles danced around the portal and the signature whispering noises filled the air, which had only been an annoyance before now made Tommy’s skin crawl.

With only a moment's hesitation, Tommy stepped forward into the violet gateway to the overworld, his vision filling with purple, and basking in the blessed cold of the sub-dimensional pocket. 

\-------- ~~~ --------

Fundy’s time on the Dream SMP had been particularly eventful. Or actually, not very eventful at all, especially compared to what Tommy had been doing. But either way, the few events that had happened had been interesting, to say the least.

Fundy had opened his eyes immediately, to also immediately be blinded by the sun. He pulled his hands up over his face to shade his eyes, and saw the orange fur covering his hand. Not hand, paw.

That got him awake quickly. He sat up to see that, yep, he was covered in fur. Orange fur, with paws and pointed ears and, (he found this while rubbing his face) a muzzle. He was wearing a black leather jacket and pants, with a colorful strip on the front and gold circling the wrist cuffs, and a hat with golden markings on it. And, and, and. And a white-tipped tail (he had to check, and he didn’t know how to feel about his theory being right).

Fundy put his hands over his face (as best he could with a muzzle) and screamed.

He then spent the next few minutes expecting to wake up from this nightmare, this fur-covered nightmare. He tried to distract himself by looking at his surroundings, definitely not panicking, and found himself in a forest of spruce trees that were incredibly tall. Like, taller than normal evergreens. Also, their branches only spread out the tops of the trees, not all the way along it, making a shaded forest floor full of dead needles and ferns that Fundy thought looked remarkably like podzol. 

The fact that he was inside of Minecraft was just that: a fact. Where else could he be? How else was he a FOX? A LITERAL FOX?!

That’s when Fundy heard the snapping of a stick behind him, and when he turned around he locked eyes with a tall, black creature that everyone knew you weren’t supposed to lock eyes with.

Fundy said something along the lines of “WAAH!”, got on his feet, and stumbled away through the forest. He could hear the enderman following him, he was sure, but as soon as he glanced behind him, his foot twisted down into a crack in the ground and he went down hard. Hard enough, surprisingly, to knock himself unconscious.

~*~

Fundy woke up some time later to an announcement in the chat:

_TommyInnit has completed the challenge [Return to Sender]_

He wasn’t sure whether it had woken him up or not, but either way, he was awake, and the enderman was nowhere to be found. Fundy had thought it might kill him in his sleep, but no, it had been a coward and run away. Of course.

He was startled to see evidence of someone else here inside of the game with him, and a flurry of pride, shock, and fear bloomed off of the realization that Tommy had been fighting a ghast and had managed to kill it with its own fireball. That meant he was in the Nether, and Fundy hoped with a sick feeling that the next announcement in chat wouldn’t be Tommy’s death.

Fundy suddenly had a thought: would he respawn if he died? He didn’t really want to find out by dying, he shuddered at the very thought of that.

Fundy sat up and his eye caught the attention of something on the ground next to him. The thing seemed to be a package of some sort; something wrapped in slightly-faded paper and tied closed with a piece of string.

Curious, Fundy reached over and picked up the strange package. Wincing as the pain from hitting his head so hard ricocheted through his skull, Fundy pulled the string off the ‘gift’ and the paper fell away to reveal a compass. It’s surface shining in the sun as though it had been recently polished (or recently made?), and the red needle pointed slightly off of the direction Fundy had been running.

It took him a moment to realize that the paper that the compass had been wrapped in had writing on it, in fact, it was a note. It read:

_To Fundy,_

_You have woken up in the middle of the woods (as you can clearly see) and I doubt that you’ll know your way out. The compass I’ve given you points to the world spawn, so if you follow it, you’ll find the main lands of the Dream SMP. Not only civilization, but also your fellow players and friends who have been victim to the same turn of fate as you._

_I hate to say it, but you, your friends, and I, are all inside of Minecraft. The Dream SMP, to be exact. I wish you the best of luck in surviving in this strange world._

_To you, Fundy; I hope you’ll live the night._

There was no clue to who had written the note, although by the way they said ‘your friends’ and ‘I’ separately, Fundy assumed that he didn’t know them. It also didn’t provide how the person had found Fundy, if he was lost in the woods, also why they didn’t show themselves.  
Maybe they had gotten rid of the enderman.

Fundy realized that what the note had said was true: without the compass, he wouldn’t know the way out of the woods. He vaguely recalled being lost even before this ‘turn of fate’, as the authorless note had said.

Fundy saw no better choice than to trust the note and follow the compass to wherever it might lead him. 

Hopefully to his friends. 

Or ‘fellow players’.

\-------- ~~~ --------

Purpled was NOT having fun.

He had done practically nothing, but fate had decided to make him suffer. Even more than Tommy, in a way.

Purpled had woken up, got to his feet, and then instantly lost his balance and crashed into a tree. He sat there, leaned back against the trunk, and lost consciousness. He regained it a few minutes later, only to suffer the reality that he was extremely nauseous, to the point where he couldn’t do anything except sit there and deal with it. He was so faint, too; he was drifting in and out of consciousness every few minutes.

Purpled’s breathing was unsteady and he was shaking from fatigue. His mind was foggy and he was generally in pain and he couldn’t form a single coherent thought and, at this point, favored the dark void of unconsciousness to his current reality.

_TommyInnit has completed the challenge [Return to Sender]_

The message might’ve saved Purpled, as he was able to focus on it and pull himself out of nothingness at the thought that he might not be alone. The nausea faded, so did the fogginess and faintness, but he was still shaking as he pulled his legs close to his chest and simply breathed. 

He was able to calm his racing heart and focus on what the message at the corner of his vision meant. It was like an announcement in Minecraft, but that was stupid. Yeah, stupid. Completely…

He faded out again, just as he thought he was done with the torture. This time he stayed asleep for longer, enough to give his mind some well-needed rest. When he woke up again, he paid more attention to his surroundings.

A forest of thick, dark-wooded trees and a leafy canopy that blocked out a lot of light from above. The ground was covered in soft grass and there was silence all around, not even any birdsong. It wasn’t creepy or unsettling, instead, it was calm and peaceful. Purpled just sat against his tree for a while.

Purpled was in a kind of daze, not quite fully conscious. Otherwise, he might not have been able to sit still for this long.

As he started to slowly come back, he realized that the world did not look normal, instead, it was like he was in a painting. Another thing, he was wearing a dark purple hoodie and dark grey pants. 

Also, he didn’t have a clue where he was.

Finally, Purpled felt good enough to attempt to stand, and when that was a success, he started walking. He didn’t know where he was going to go, but he had to go somewhere, right?

After only a few minutes of walking, Purpled got the feeling that he was being watched. He looked around, but didn’t see anyone, so he just continued through the forest, although with a new sense of uneasiness. At some point he realized that it was getting darker, whether from the sun going down or a thicker part of the forest, Purpled didn’t know.

He still felt that he wasn’t alone, and this time when he turned to look behind him, Purpled saw a flash of magenta eyes that vanished almost instantly. He froze for a moment, thinking he might have imagined it, and then continued onward.

But there- he saw it again: purple-pink eyes staring at him from the shadows, but this time, Purpled saw the long body of an enderman attached. It didn’t teleport away, just stood there and made one of it’s distorted sounds.

The creature was in front of Purpled now, so he had to turn to avoid it. It wasn’t attacking him, and Purpled was making sure not to look the mob straight in its eyes. He wasn’t convinced that what he was seeing was real; maybe he was hallucinating or some crap like that, but he started walking faster as he turned left.

Purpled was on the alert now, and he found that there were enderman everywhere. Dozens of eyes stared at him from behind trees and little purple particles danced through the air around him. Purpled was downright scared now, and he kept his eyes averted to the ground ahead of him. He had run into a few trees, but he still walked onward. The enderman would appear to his side or in front of him and always behind him, so he got the impression that he was being led through the forest in a specific direction, because when there would always be only one way he could go without having to push past the tall, dark mobs.

His theory was tested when his path was interrupted by one of the creatures teleporting directly in front of him, greatly startling Purpled. He instinctively started to look up at the monster’s face but thought better of it and instead looked at its feet. He could feel the enderman’s cold gaze on the back of his neck, and he was forced to make a decision.

Purpled had originally been trying to go forward, to a part of the forest that looked brighter and thinner and that he hoped would lead out of this enderman-infested woods. But it was clear his path was being altered, and that the enderman were leading him somewhere, unless Purpled had gone crazy by now, which wasn’t too far of a theory.

The way the mobs wanted him to go led to a dark part: vines draping across the path and the leaves blocking out all of the sun so he would be walking in a shadowy tunnel with a bunch of purple-eyed monsters following him.

Purpled decided that he didn’t want to follow the enderman to what might be his death, so he had to break free of the circle and walk past the enderman. The very idea scared him, because he had been trying to get as far away from them as possible until now, and this was already the closest he had come to one.

But Purpled slowly sidestepped around the creature, and it made no move to stop him. But Purpled felt its eyes following him, and he prayed that the mob wouldn’t attack. But it didn’t. The enderman just stood there and stared.

Purpled was immediately surrounded by enderman this time, the monsters clustered around him, with only a few between Purpled and them. They were trying to herd him back the way tey wanted him to go. When Purpled took a step to pass them again, the endermen emitted a sound as though they had been hit. Their screams made Purpled jump and freeze in place until they stopped.

Purpled had been scared of the endermen this entire time, but until now they hadn’t been hostile at all, and so he kind of assumed that they wouldn’t hurt him unless he looked them in the eye. But now the mobs seemed angry, aggressive, even, and Purpled remembered that these were dangerous monsters. He couldn’t even fight back if they attacked him; he didn’t have any sort of weapon.

But Purpled tried to push past them once more, in desperation, and a black hand pushed him back, almost gently. But Purpled panicked, the reality of being surrounded by dozens of mobs that could kill him if he so much as glanced at their faces hit him with a wave of terror. He tried, foolishly, to get past the enderman barrier again, and this time was met with a forceful slam to his chest.

It was so fast he didn’t even see anything but a black blur and a flurry of particles. The blow was hard enough to throw Purpled to the ground and knock the wind out of him. He gasped in pain as he tried to get air back into his lungs and his eyes accidentally wandered straight to the gaze of the enderman. It towered above him and Purpled could see the other mobs coming closer out of the corner of his vision, and as he stared, paralized by fear, into the purple eyes of the monster the thought that they would be the last he would ever see flashed through his head and he slammed his own eyes closed, bracing for the next hit.

The enderman was making that noise that the tall mobs did every time you looked at them. Titled ‘stare’, it was considered one of the most terrifying sounds in Minecraft, and now it was possibly the worst noise Purpled had ever heard.

But as the sound faded and all that Purpled heard was the soft, distorted murmuring of the endermen around him. No painful attacks landed on him, and no more horrible enderman screams.

Purpled risked opening his eyes and found that the endermen were just standing there, still staring at him, but that they had moved back a bit. Purpled slowly moved his hands away from where they had been covering his face and fearfully looked around. There was a piece of paper beside him that hadn't been there before. He picked it up. It read:

_Follow their lead. They’re trying to help you._

There was nothing else. No author, no explanation, nothing. Just those eight words. Purpled looked up at the endermen surrounding him. He realized that he hadn’t accepted that he was inside of Minecraft, but now he figured he probably should. He sighed and leaned back against the ground, tasting blood in his mouth, and thought about what had happened.

_Purpled has discovered the secret [The Allegiance]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the chat announcements-  
> So I don’t if Tommy had already completed that challenge, and I didn’t want to search through hours and hours of footage to find out, so if he has, then in this story something ‘glitched’ when the players were transported to Minecraft and (some of) everyone’s challenges reset. 
> 
> Also, about Purpled ‘discovering the secret’, first, I would like to say that I was inspired to add my own little features into this fic by one titled ‘check chat’ recommended to me by MinteaMintrix in the comments of the first chapter. Also, you’ll see what Purpled had found later in the story. (I love suspense, so you’ll have to wait)  
> \---------  
> Some of you might have noticed that any profanities have been replaced by other words. Fuck - fudge / frick, shit - shoot / crap, hell - heck. This wasn’t my choice and I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to imagine them. Again, I’m sorry.
> 
> P.S, I wasn’t sure if Purpled’s part was believable, and I actually had a very hard time writing it, so maybe tell me what you think in the comments?
> 
> P.P.S, no-body saw that I forgot to title this chapter at first shhhhh


	3. Finding Friends

“What happened?” Sapnap asked for the millionth time.

“We don’t know,” George replied for the millionth time. “That's the entire point.”

Dream had found his two friends arguing in the community house, and upon a quick reunion and catching up (there wasn’t much to catch up on) he found that they knew exactly as much as he did: nothing. Besides the fact that the world looked exactly like Dream’s SMP.

Through a brief argument, the three of them had decided to go looking for other people. George had suggested that they look in the community house for supplies, but all they found were some miniature blocks inside of a chest, so they just went without. Which, granted, Dream thought might be a stupid idea if they were inside of Minecraft, because one of the main points of the game is to fight mobs... but whatever.

Their plan was to go along the main pathways and try to find other players. One of the most traversed areas of the SMP was the intersections next to the Embassy, where the SMP lands met with L’Manburg. Dream thought that they might make a little camp or something next to the path, as people were more likely to go there.

“Should we check spawn?” Sapnap asked. “Would anyone be there?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Dream replied. “I mean, we all woke up in the last place we were on the SMP, right?”

Sapnap said yes, he remembered passing through the community house on the way to do an errand, but George says he doesn’t remember what he had been doing, which Dream thinks is a little weird.

“We could check spawn at some point, but by then anyone who’s there would probably have gone to the main SMP anyway,” Dream said. “And Sapnap, what’s up with you?”

Sapnap had been practically bouncing around while they walked, and he acted like he had just eaten a bunch of sugar or something.

“What?” Sapnap asked.

“You’re on an energy high or something,” George said.

“Oh. Huh.” Sapnap seemed unconcerned at this, but then again, what was there to worry about?

“What if-” Dream started to say, but was interrupted by something shooting past his face with only an inch to spare. Whatever it was thunked into a tree next to him.

“ARROW!” George shrieked.

Dream whirled around and saw a flash of white in the shadows of a tree. He could hear the rattling of bones as the skeleton notched another arrow in its bow and prepared to fire. Sapnap was just turning around; he was ahead of the other two and didn’t see what had happened. Dream launched forward and shoved him out of the way as the monster let another projectile loose. The arrow sailed right where Sapnap had been and would’ve hit him in the chest if Dream hadn’t pushed him.

Before Dream could think, he pulled out an axe seemingly from nowhere. Acting on an instinct he didn’t know he had, he jumped towards the skeleton and brought the axe down on the monster. It flashed red and died with one hit, disappearing with nothing left but a few wisps of white smoke.

All three players were equally shocked. No one spoke for a moment, a confused silence spreading between them. Then Sapnap asked, “How did you do that?”

“I… I don’t know,” Dream said, staring at the gleaming weapon in his hands.

“Wait… where did you get the axe?” George questioned. 

“I told you, I don’t know,” Dream repeated. “I just… thought of it. And it appeared.”

Looks of confusion were obvious on all of their faces. After another moment Sapnap said, “Well, when I think of an axe, nothing happens.”

Dream looked at his axe. The handle was wood, while the head was a purplish-reddish-grey metal: netherite. Shimmers of purple enchantment moved like waves across it, and the edge was wickedly sharp. There were small words written where the handle met the blade, which Dream found told the various enchantments on it.

_TommyInnit has completed the challenge [Return to Sender]_

Dream, George, and Sapnap all shared a simultaneous look of surprise at the message. Dream also felt a little bit of awe at the fact that Tommy had been able to complete such a challenge so soon. Also some surprise and confusion about discovering that chat popped up in a corner of their vision.

“There are other people here!” Sapnap said enthusiastically, which might have had something to do with the energy that still radiated off of him.

“Wait, but that means he’s in the Nether,” George said, and they all stopped. The thought of Tommy waking up in the Nether, with nothing and no idea what had happened scared them. 

“I hope he’ll survive it.”

All of the tension and drama between the admin and Tommy had been nothing but a part in the lore, just something the two of them had acted out on several occasions. In real life, they were still friends just roleplaying on a Minecraft server, so Dream felt no bitter thoughts about Tommy and generally wanted him to live. After all, they weren’t roleplaying anymore, they had to survive.

“We should go to the Nether portal,” Sapnap suddenly said. “We could go in and find him.”

“In the Nether?” George pointed out, alarmed. “The hell of Minecraft?”

“Well, chances are that Tommy’s probably on one of the paths,” Dream reasoned. “Or maybe not,” he added.

“Well, we could at least wait by the portal,” Sapnap argued. “So we’d be there when he comes out.”

“If he comes out,” George said quietly, which earned him a glare from both friends.

They argued for a while on the path, about chances and the layout of the Nether until another announcement caught their attention.

_Purpled has discovered the secret [The Allegiance]_

“The Allegiance?” Sapnap read aloud. “What's that?”

“And how did Purpled 'discover a secret'?” George added. “Is that some kind of advancement?”

Dream didn’t answer, instead, he was trying to figure out how to see what the message ment. In normal Minecraft, you just had to scroll over the text and it would appear beside it. But Dream didn’t have a cursor in his head and the test was in his vision, but after a minute of tinkering Dream was able to pull it up.

“Discover the alliance between species; this might be important.” Dream read aloud to the surprise of the other two. “That’s what it says.”

After Dream explained how to find what the advancements meant, they pondered what it could mean and how Purpled might’ve done it. But they came up with no useful ideas about whatever “the alliance between species” was, or anything else about the unexpected message. Nor were George or Sapnap able to summon their own weapons, like Dream had. In his head, Dream listed who they knew for sure was inside of Minecraft: himself, George, Sapnap, Tommy, and Purpled. And if they were here, then others certainly were too.

The trio ended up continuing along the path towards the nether portal, Dream with his axe propped on his shoulder.

\-------- ~~~ --------

Wilbur sat on the ground, and watched the clouds in the sky start to gather and darken. A light snow started falling, and Wilbur still didn’t know how to fudging STAND UP.

He had tried again and again, but for some STUPID REASON, he couldn’t get to his feet. He was starting to get really annoyed, and beneath that, a little bit scared.

_TommyInnit has completed the challenge [Return to Sender]_

This shocked Wilbur. For one, there was text in the corner of his vision, two, it looked like a Minecraft advancement, three, he wasn’t alone, four, if it was Minecraft, then that meant that TOMMY WAS IN THE NETHER (please please please don’t die oh no), and five, that meant that he was INSIDE OF MINECRAFT.

Wilbur laughed. He wasn’t in Minecraft. That was just-

***

Ghostbur was still unnerved by the fact that he felt like he wasn’t supposed to be here. He couldn’t explain it, and he had been on this server for a while now. 

Ghostbur wondered why he was just sitting in the snow in the middle of the forest.

He ‘floated’, for lack of a better word, up to a standing position. He vaguely remembered how weird it had been, at first, to adjust to the different way of moving. Ghosts didn’t walk, they levitated in the air, never truly touching the ground. 

Ghostbur looked up at the trees and thought, distractedly, how pretty they were, and familiar, even in greyscale. He floated over to the crest of a hill, his legs bent slightly and his feet in the air, and ended up looking down onto a valley surrounded by snowy mountains. In the center of a valley was a small house, with white walls crossed by dark wooden beams. 

Ghostbur smiled, he remembered now that he had been going to see Techno, and started to drift towards the cottage when-

***

Wilbur made a kind of “ack” noise when he came back, and he immediately expected to fall over because he was not on the ground. Also, he was REALLY FREAKED OUT by what had happened. AGAIN.

But now he had an explanation, he had been Ghos- 

No, no, no, no, no. He was NOT in Minecraft and he had NOT become a completely different person just now, and he was NOT floating above the ground, but he totally was and he did NOT know what to do about it.

Wilbur took a second to calm down and process what had just happened. If he had truly become Ghostbur (he shuddered at the thought), then there wasn’t anything he could do about it right now. But, whatever was true, now he knew how to move and where he was, at least.

He tried going forward, just a little bit, but he didn’t move. It took Wilbur enough time to figure out how to simply go forward that by the time he was able to float a couple of feet, he saw another announcement-

_Purpled has discovered the secret [The Allegiance]_

So, there were at least two other people in this world with Wilbur. It took him a moment to realize that he didn’t recognize the message; it wasn’t an advancement or challenge. Wilbur had never heard of discovering secrets before. But before he could start wondering what it was, he was distracted by something.

Wilbur had a clear view of the valley from his spot, which appeared to be on the side of a mountain. He saw two dots come out of the house, and then walk around to the side where a stable sat against the wall.

Wilbur immediately realized that the figures must be other players, and he had a guess on who they might be.

Wilbur now had a new motive to get moving, and so he did, albeit with some difficulty. It took him longer to float down the mountain than it would have if he had walked. But he ended up maintaining a steady pace until he arrived at a break in the trees. The house was surrounded by a small clearing, and Wilbur realized then that there weren’t any mountains around Technoblade’s house in the game. This worried him, as he might not be at his friends house in the first place, although it did look awfully similar.

But the main thing that worried Wilbur was that there was no one there. At all. Although, as the ghost got closer to the front step he noticed that there were footprints in the snow, and an impression as though someone had been lying down. The tracks led from the doorway down to the stable, which was empty, and then went off through the clearing and out into the opposite side of the woods.

There were two sets of human footprints, and then one set of horse prints. The two players must have taken the horse and set off who-knows-where-to. Wilbur went to the bottom of the steps and, after figuring out how to climb them, into the house, which was indeed empty. He looked around for clues but didn’t find anything useful, although Wilbur did find that he could still pick things up as a ghost after lifting the lid of a chest.

He saw no other option than to follow the tracks, which he desperately hoped wouldn’t be covered up by the snow. So Wilbur set off back into the forest.

The tracks started off as one pair of human tracks and the horse prints, so Wilbur assumed that one of the two people were riding the horse. But after a while, the tracks turned to only the horse prints, which meant that now both people were riding the horse.

At one point, Wilbur started yelling, “Hello?!” in the hopes that someone would hear him. He was ‘levitating’ fairly fast, which was a little surprising, and he hoped that the players and horse were walking and not running. Soon, though, he got his answer.

“Hello?”

Someone had called back, and Wilbur thought he recognized the voice, but he didn’t dare hope until he came upon two of his closest friends atop a horse, riding through the snow.

“Wilbur?” Phil asked, shocked.

\-------- ~~~ --------

Skeppy’s awakening had been slightly different than the others’. He remembered playing Minecraft on the Dream SMP, and then his screen flashing white, but unlike anyone else, something more had happened.

He remembered the brightness, right after his screen had gone blank, and he remembered feeling REALLY weird, both physically and mentally. There was nothingness around him, bright whtie nothingness, and then there was something in front of him. It was blurry at first, like an unfocused camera, but then it became clearer and Skeppy was able to make out a rough shape: two vertical parallel lines, with some kind of circle between them. Inside of the circle was an image. A… tree? Skeppy couldn’t get a good look at it before it moved. It ‘glitched’ like two images overlapping each other until it showed a different one: something Skeppy thought resembled the Minecraft logo- a creeper face. Then he was lost to unconsciousness and woke up some time later.

Skeppy woke up in the grass lawn of a small mansion. It had white walls, blue-stained windows, and torch pillars bordering a path. The idea of Minecraft came to him, but he denied the prospect and tried to think of other scenarios that would explain where he was.

Skeppy was still trying to figure it out when he had a thought and called out “Hello?!” to see if anyone could hear him. At first, no one replied, but then he did it again hoping for different results.

Someone did hear him, and they called back from WAY out in the forest on the border of the mansion.

Skeppy couldn’t hear exactly what the person was saying, but he called back “Hello? I hear you!” which started a long line of various calls as he heard the whoever it was follow Skeppy’s voice until he was able to understand what they were saying, which is when he heard “Skeppy!” and immediately knew who the other person was.

“Bad!” he called as he saw his friend burst out from the tree cover.

Relief and joy was evident on both of their faces, at not only the thought that they weren’t alone in this, but also that they were with each other- two friends who had known each other for years. 

They both rushed forward and hugged each other, because why not?

“This wasn’t what I planned when I said we should meet up in real life,” Skeppy joked as they let go of each other.

“Me neither,” Bad said. “Wait, is that a creeper?”

Skeppy whirled around to see what Bad was staring at. There, in a path of shadow, something moved. It was barely visible, but Skeppy could make out a green camouflage pattern and black eyes staring back at him.

“Oh my god, is that what they look like?” Skeppy asked. The creeper was slim and as just tall as Skeppy was, but it seemed now that it was bigger. It was the basic shape of its Minecraft counterpart, but it was somehow far more creepier and terrifying.

“It's just… staring,” Bad said, ignoring Skeppy’s question. “It sees us, but it’s not attacking. Thank goodness,” he quietly added.

“Wait,” Skeppy turned back to his friend. “Creeper? Are we in Minecraft?”

“Yes, you muffinhead!”

Skeppy laughed out loud, but it was a nervous laugh, because the theory made sense. He just didn’t want it to be true.

Bad looked a little bit offended. He said, “Then why else do I look like this, Skeppy?”

Skeppy hadn’t even noticed that Bad wasn’t a normal human. He had black skin with thite eyes and was wearing a black and red hoodie, like his Minecraft skin. He also held an impressive-looking sword, which caught Skeppy’s attention and made him wonder where Bad had gotten it.

“And you too,” Bad said. “You’re wearing a blue hoodie, like your Minecraft skin.”

“Yeah, but I always wear blue anyway. Where did you get that sword?”

Bad sighed, but said, “It was strapped to my back and I found it when I woke up. But seriously, are you not freaked out that we’re inside of a video game?”

“Nope.”

His friend sighed again.

“But, Bad, think about this. If we ARE in Minecraft, then think of what we could do! Like, we could fly with riptide tridents! Or elytra, if we could somehow get those! We can build or craft anything we want to!”

The other thought for a moment, and then said, “But after we do those things, how are we going to get back?”

Skeppy was silent. He didn’t know. Bad didn’t know either.

“Hey,” Skeppy said, trying to change the subject. “Can we find me a sword? Now I want one.”

“Of course,” Bad said a little sarcastically, but there was a smile on his face. 

The two spent a little while exploring the mansion, and picking through chests scattered around. There wasn’t an enderchest, but Skeppy was able to find a diamond sword stowed away in the bottom of one of the chests. He could have gone with an axe he found, but he felt safer with the sword and also wanted to match Bad. They also talked about what had happened when they woke up, and Bad was really confused about what Skeppy saw, as was Skeppy at the fact that Bad’ couldn’t remember what he had been doing.

“I remember,” Skeppy said. “We were in a voice call together, just playing Minecraft. You really don’t remember?”

“No,” Bad replied. “I really don’t.”

Skeppy was examining the new sword when something appeared in his sight:

_TommyInnit has completed the challenge [Return to Sender]_

“Tommy’s here?” Bad asked. He looked at Skeppy with an expression of confusion that matched the one on Skeppy’s face.

“Yeah. Then there must be others too!” Skeppy replied, suddenly excited at the thought of his other friends being there too.

“He’s in the Nether, though...” Bad and Skeppy shared the same expression of horror. The thought of Tommy, the youngest player on the server, having to fight a ghast in the Nether in Minecraft was downright terrifying. 

After a moment of frightened silence, Bad broke through and suggested that they learn how to use their swords. Skeppy agreed, and the two spent a good little while swinging at various things. There were a few animals around, like chickens, but neither of them wanted nor could bring themselves to try and kill something alive.

Bad appeared to be doing really well with his sword, it almost seemed to come naturally to him. Skeppy was a little jealous, because he just felt as though he was just swinging at random and had no skill at all. Though the jealousy quickly vanished, as he couldn’t stay like that at his friend for long.

“Do you think,” Bad started to say, “that our in-game skills have… translated into here? I mean, like, are we going to be good at what we were good at in normal Minecraft? Is-”

He was cut off by another announcement in the corner of his vision, which they both assumed was chat-

_Purpled has discovered the secret [The Allegiance]_

“The allegiance? What’s that?” Bad asked.

“Well I don’t know.” Skeppy replied. “Maybe some kind of secret advancement that no one knew about?”

“But wouldn’t someone have found it by now?” Bad countered.

Skeppy was going to argue, when he had a thought. “Wait, so if Tommy was in the Nether… would he come out at the Nether portal?”

“Maybe…” Bad replied, a little hesitant. But then he suddenly said, “Oh! Discover the alliance between species; this might be important.”

“What?”

“Purpled’s message, that’s what ‘The Allegiance’ is. Or at least what it says.”

“How do you know that?”

After Bad explained how to bring up what the advancements say, they discussed the theory that Tommy would be by the Nether portal. They ended up agreeing to go there and at least check it out, and maybe by luck they’d find someone else along the way.

The set out for the community portal, almost getting lost because the scenery looked so different. But they finally found it, but to their surprise, a few someones also had the same idea.

“Bad? Skeppy?” Dream asked as they stepped onto the blackstone ground around the portal. Dream, Sapnap, and George were all sitting in front of the portal: Sapnap was leaning against the side, while George was on the ground and Dream was standing near, with an axe propped on his shoulder.

“Dream? George? Sapnap?” Bad said in response. “You’re here too?” 

“Apparently, yeah,” Sapnap replied with a wide grin. “Minecraft.”

After a quick and excited conversation, they confirmed that both groups had had the same idea about Tommy and the Nether, and that they were indeed inside of Minecraft. There was no more denying that now.

Skeppy, Bad, Dream, George, and Sapnap all waited for Tommy by the portal, simply by the hopes that their friend was near the main Nether area. Oh, how wrong they were. 

But they waited, completely unaware that they were being watched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People in the comments- can't wait for the next chapter!
> 
> Me- sitting at my desk listening to Minecraft music disc soundtrack and eating a tootsie pop 
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Also, are keyboard keys clicking not the most satisfying sounds ever?


	4. Sun, Snow, and Sand

“So,” Quackity said, “where are they?”

He was leaning on an oak tree, looking out over L’Manburg. Or, what it used to be. Now it was just the L’Manhole, a huge grey gash in the land that was once green with grass, then brown with wood, and now charred stone. It looked even worse in real life than it did in Minecraft. It was just horrible. 

Tubbo looked up at the sun. When he woke up, it was directly in the middle of the sky. Noon. Now it had slid west, just a little bit.

“We don’t know for sure,” Tubbo replied. “I mean, we saw him on the paths, but then he moved, and after that we saw someone else over there.” He pointed down the Prime Path, where both players had thought that they had seen someone walking.

Tubbo had woken up nearly right next to Quackity, up on a hill overlooking the L’Manhole. They had stayed there, discussing stuff, and seen at least two other people. One they thought might be Dream, based on the lime green hoodie he was wearing, and the other they couldn’t see well enough. Both of them were fairly far away. Too far away to hear Quackity’s shouts, at least.

“Big Q...” Tubbo started. “Are you SURE we’re not-”

“NO.”

Tubbo sighed. Quackity refused to believe that they might be inside of Minecraft. For the most part, Tubbo had agreed with him (or at least pretended to) but he secretly thought that they might be.Or maybe he was crazy. After all, his friend’s theory that they had all been kidnapped and taken to a replica of their server was a more plausible theory than being stuck in a video game… right? Maybe both of them were crazy.

Or maybe not. Tubbo didn’t know what to think.

“Well, if Dream was there-” Tubbo started, but he was interrupted by Quackity yelling, “WHAT? WHY ARE THERE WORDS IN THE CORNER OF MY EYE?”

_-TommyInnit has completed the challenge [Return to Sender]_

“Tommy’s here?!” Tubbo suddenly had a rush of happiness at the thought that his best friend was here with him. “If this is Minecraft, then those words must be chat, right?”

“No, that’s not- no.” Quackity kept saying, over and over again. “That’s not- HA- not Minecraft! NO!”

Tubbo was starting to be concerned about Big Q’s mental health.

“He’s killed a ghast!” Tubbo exclaimed, ignoring his friend for the moment. “Already! Wait, but then that means he’s in the Nether-”

“Tubbo! NO! We’re not IN MINECRAFT. Stop thinking that! This is just some crazy… crazy…”

Tubbo was silent. He didn’t like it that Quackity had shouted at him. He really was concerned for his friend, but Tubbo didn’t know what he should do about it, so he just changed the subject.

“We should go look for Dream and that other person,” he said. “Maybe they know what’s happening.”

“How would they know?” Quackity scoffed, but Tubbo didn’t take any offense. “Unless they caused it? OH DREAM, DID YOU FUDGING DO THIS? THINK THAT IT’D BE FUNNY, HUH?”

“Big Q!” Tubbo went over to him and put his hands on his friend’s shoulders. He absentmindedly noticed that his friend (and everything around him, for that matter) looked illustrated, but his thoughts were on Quackity at the moment. He was practically shaking, and his pupils were constricted. He looked like a maniac. “Stop, just breathe or something. You’re going to have a panic attack or… something! Just calm down.”

Quackity looked ready to push Tubbo away, but as he locked eyes, he suddenly just stopped and slid down to the ground with his hands over his face. Tubbo, a little shocked, went down with him.

Quackity started muttering something in Spanish, until Tubbo, not quite sure what to do, said, “Hey, it’s alright, we’ll be fine.” He honestly felt silly, trying to calm his friend like this, but he didn’t have a better idea so Tubbo just went with it.

To his surprise, Quackity went with it too; instead of scoffing at him again, mumbled something like, “Tubbo where are we?” 

“I have an idea, but you’re not gonna like it,” Tubbo said, and Big Q sighed. “I know,” he said, “Minecraft.”

_Purpled has discovered the secret [The Allegiance]_

“What the frick is that?” Quackity said.

“I don’t know, I’ve never heard of it before.” Tubbo said. “Well, that’s two other people, Tommy and Purpled, plus the two who we saw on the paths. Maybe there’s more. The whole server?”

“At least we’re not alone,” Quackity said, and Tubbo was surprised that his friend would say that out loud, even if Tubbo had been thinking it himself.

They were silent again, and Tubbo took the time to think back on Tommy’s announcement. He felt proud and a little jealous that his friend had killed a ghast with its own fireball so soon into waking up; that challenge was hard enough as it was in the normal game. He also wondered how scared Tommy must have been while doing it- Tubbo assumed that he must have done it in self defense, he knew his friend well enough to know he wouldn’t have purposely gone after a ghast when his life depended on it.

“Hey, do you think we respawn?” Tubbo asked as he and Quackity got up off the ground.

Quackity laughed. “I’m not gonna be the one to find out, but I’d guess no, whoever put us here must have wanted us to suffer.”

“You have a way of just killing the mood, you know that?” Tubbo said bitterly. 

Quackity laughed again, this time much louder than before. “You’re the one who brought up death!” He seemed to be in a much better mood, so Tubbo tried to forget about his little outburst. They needed a plan. And to form a plan, they both needed to accept where they were.

“So, what’s the plan?” Both of them asked at the exact same time. 

They conversed for a while, about going out and roaming the SMP, but Tubbo kept noticing the sun creeping towards the horizon and couldn’t help remembering one of the first rules of Minecraft: the first night is always the hardest, so get prepared. 

So Tubbo argued with Quackity, who wanted to go and find other people, that yes, he did too, but they needed a base first. That the others would have the same idea, and that mobs came out at night, and that they would need someplace safe to sleep. 

Big Q eventually gave in, and by that time the sun was halfway between midday and sunset. They might have to hurry. Unfortunately, all buildings around the L’Manhole had been destroyed, and instead of going to find another building somewhere else, like Tubbo first thought, Quackity suggested instead that they make their own right there, near the hole, so that people would be more likely to find them if they checked the area. Tubbo agreed, and they both went to go look for supplies.

Quackity had made himself in charge of the actual building part, and Tubbo was to go out and get blocks. While carrying an armful of miniature wooden planks back to where they decided to make their base, Tubbo said, “There has to be an easier way to do this, I’ve only got you, like, ten blocks.” 

“No, look, you’ve got multiple stacks.” Big Q pointed to little numbers that hovered next to each block, showing how many were in a stack. He also showed Tubbo how to place blocks (it was fairly easy, especially with the longer reach he had) and break them, although the process included repetitively smacking the wood with his fist until it turned miniature. 

When Tubbo set off to go get wool, stone, and iron if he could find it, he decided to try something out. Which is why he returned twenty minutes later with a netherite axe and an inventory full of various items, to the complete and utter shock of Quackity.

Inventory was interesting- you could see a ‘screen’ for lack of a better word, pop up in front of you when you thought about wanting to access your inventory. You could see what was inside your own inventory, but not other peoples’. You were able to move things around inside of it by dragging the items with your finger. It was easy once you figured it out, almost natural, and Tubbo had found various tools, items, and a set of armor in his inventory.

Hotbar was a little confusing, but it ended up being a quick-access inventory (just like it was in-game). You just had to think about a certain tool or block or whatever you had and it would appear in your hand instantly. Tubbo found that you could actually see your hotbar as a mental image in your head, which is how he found his axe. He kept his armor off, though, because when he put it on (with great difficulty) he felt weighed down and clanky. 

As he was teaching these things to Quackity, the two discussed the plans for their building. There would be the ground floor, with all the beds and such, and then a small upstairs room that would serve as a watchtower. It was a little ambitious, so the two got to work, Tubbo having to go on only one more trip away to get glass for windows.

An hour later, their building was almost finished: a spruce wood house with no windows on the ground floor, but the second level having many large empty frames which Quackity was filling in with glass. Part of the bottom floor had two simple red beds, made from some extra wool Tubbo found in a barrel. There was a double chest filled with extra blocks and materials, and a few bits of dried meat they had discovered that tasted like beef jerky. The inside was lit up with many lanterns, which Tubbo hoped would be a beacon to anyone out in the night. The only thing the two hadn't done was the floor, which was still grass, but that wasn’t much of a problem.

They had discovered inventory, building, and crafting, and knew of at least four other people in the game with them. Everything was going good. A little too good.

Tubbo took a step away from their base and admired their handiwork, which, granted, was a little bit crude, but was quite impressive for a first-time build, Tubbo thought.

That’s when he heard the first hiss of a monster.

\-------- ~~~ --------

Technoblade had been quite confused when he woke up in a strange house in the middle of nowhere, and it just got more confusing when there was a knock on the door and in came Phil, saying, “Woah, Techno?” and then he kind of figured it out from there.

He kind of silently freaked out when he found (when Phil told him) that the upper half of his face was, like, PIG (or boar or whatever) and he had bright pink hair. It might’ve been a little unfair that Phil got to be a normal human wearing a hat and Techno had to have the animal side. 

Phil had apparently woken up right outside of the house and recognized it immediately, while it still took Techno a good five minutes to accept that he was indeed inside of the game he played for a living.

There had been the initial panic, for both himself and Phil, and then they both saw Tommy’s achievement in chat, and both were absolutely terrified for him. Techno tried to convince himself that Tommy could take care of himself, but he had his doubts. 

Then Purpled’s message appeared, which had sparked curiosity but didn’t seem like he had done something dangerous, so they weren’t very worried about that. 

While Techno was brainstorming what they should do, Phil had found a map lain out on a table. They were both confused at first, because what the map showed was not the normal layout of the SMP, but there were markings that read ‘House’, ‘Portal’, ‘Logstedshire’ and then, on the opposite side of the page ‘L’Manburg’, ‘Community Portal’, and ‘Pogtopia’. 

Phil didn’t think that it was an actual map at first, because he said he remembered the geography of some of those places and it was NOT the same on the map, but Techno pointed out that there also weren’t normally mountains around his house, and also that they were inside of Minecraft, so theoretically anything could happen.

Both of them had decided to go to the main lands of the Dream SMP, and by Nether portal. Sure, now it was across a mountain or two, but it certainly looked like a better/shorter route than trying to cross the ocean and walk the normal way.

Upon walking outside, Techno heard a neigh and saw that his horse, Carl, was in his stall. After a quick check with Phil, he decided to take the horse with them, one, because it might be faster, and two, because neither of them really wanted to leave the animal alone and stuck in his stall.

Phil had found an iron sword somewhere, and Techno had a shield, but if Phil had judged the directions right, then they should find the portal before dark and therefore avoid any possible monster encounters. Techno was riding Carl at first, and Phil was walking, but soon his friend’s feet had started to get cold in the snow, so they both rode on top of the horse for a while.

They had only been walking for an hour when they heard someone call out behind them. Techno heard it first, saying, “Phil, do you hear that?” to which he replied, “No, what?” but then they called out again, and that time Phil heard. He shouted back, “Hello!?”

They were walking in a valley between two mountains that, if their map was correct, should be a direct path to the Nether portal. They had come to a part where the trees disappeared for a moment and formed a rocky clearing, and it was behind them that someone wearing yellow stumbled out of the trees, looking beyond happy to see them.

“Wilbur?” Phil asked, shocked. “Wait… Ghostbur? Or-”

“Wilbur, it’s Willbur,” their friend said. “I think.”

“You think?” Techno said, but he was actually really happy to find Wilbur, even though he must’ve walked several miles to find them. Carl was a fast horse, even when he was walking.

Then Techno noticed that Will wasn’t standing on the ground. He was floating slightly above it, levitating in the air. Wilbur was also slightly translucent.

“What the frick Will, you’re floating!” Phil slid down off of Carl and went over to Wilbur.

“Yeah, um… I noticed,” Wilbur said. “Today’s been interesting.”

Phil went in for a hug and Wilbur accepted it, but Techno stayed on Carl, turning the horse around so that he could see the others. He briefly wondered about how Phil hadn’t given him a hug, but to be fair, Techno wasn’t a hug-type person and probably would’ve rejected it. Yeah.

“This is so weird,” Wilbur said, somewhat out of the blue. “What even happened, like, how are we here?”

“We don’t exactly know.” Phil replied, glancing at Techno. “We’re inside of Minecraft; that’s really all the information we have. Also that Tommy and Purpled are here.”

The three friends caught up with each other, Techno and Phil a little bit worried when Wilbur told them about his little Ghostbur episodes. Techno suggested that they keep moving, so they reached the portal before nightfall.

“It’s freezing,” Phil said conversationally. He pulled his black cape up over his shoulders. Techno had a cape of his own -red with a blue patch- but his had fur around his neck, which acted as a coat.

“It’s fine for me,” Wilbur replied. “But I think that's because I’m a ghost. That’s also why I can’t breathe.”

“You can’t breathe?” Techno asked, generally curious.

“No. It’s horrible,” Wilbur replied. “I-”

Will cut off suddenly, and both Techno and Phil turned to see that he had stopped moving as well. He looked lost, as though he was in a trance.

“Will?” Phil asked, concerned.

Wilbur jumped a little, as though Phil had startled him, and then gave him a confused smile. But something wasn’t right, Techno could feel it.

“His eyes…” Techno whispered, loud enough for Phil to hear. Wilbur’s eyes had gone blank, grey and empty.

“Wha-” Wilbur started to say, but then jerked suddenly and his eyes went back to normal. 

“AH I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT!” he yelled, making both Phil and Techno jump. Will put his hands on his face and groaned/screamed.

“Was that-” Techno started, but he was interrupted by Wilbur saying “YES. That’s what I was talking about. It’s horrible...”

Phil and Techno glanced at each other, both of them worried about how disturbed Wilbur was. They were disturbed themselves, but none of the three knew what to do about it, so they just kept walking.

Techno was still on Carl, Phil was walking alongside with Wilbur, who was floating. They were having random conversations to keep themselves entertained, and so far nothing interesting had happened besides Wilbur’s little event.

Until Philza ducked under a low-hanging spruce branch, and a pile of snow fell from the tree directly in front of him. It must’ve scared the life out of Phil, because he jumped and nearly backed into Wilbur. Techno chuckled.

“Holy- Phil!” Wilbur suddenly said.

“What?” Phil asked.

“You- your-” Will stuttered, “you have wings!”

“WHAT?” Phil tried to twist around to see his back, and when Techno turned, he saw that Wilbur was correct. In the place of Phil’s cape, there was a pair of black wings connected to Phil’s shoulders / back. He accidentally flared them outward and almost smacked Wilbur in the face, showing off the white diamonds on the edges of a few primary feathers.

“WHAT?” Phil said again. “Holy crap you’re right.”

“It’s like in the fanart,” Wilbur said, a little bit of awe in his voice. “Do you think you could fly?”

“Maybe…” 

“Wait,” Techno interrupted, “where did they come from? Didn’t you have a cape on before?”

“They morphed from the cape,” Wilbur explained. “I saw it.”

Phil was moving his new wings around, testing the different positions he could hold them in. Suddenly, as he folded them down, the feathers came together and… ‘melted’ into the fabric of Phil’s cape. “Oh, crap!”

“Alright, whatever you’re doing, can you do it while moving?” Techno asked. “I hate to interrupt your fun, but I don’t want to be outside if this weather picks up.”

All three of them glanced at the sky. What had started as a light snow was falling faster and thicker, white clouds blocking the sky completely. Phil and Wilbur knew Techno was right, they really should get moving.

As they walked (or floated), Phil experimented with his newfound wings. He could turn them from cape to feathers and back again, all willingly. At one point he hopped up on a rock and jumped off, flapping, but he didn’t gain any air, instead landing ungracefully in the snow, to the amusement of Techno.

After his failed attempt, he kept them in cape form. They stayed like that for the rest of their walk.

\-------- ~~~ --------

Ranboo had been walking for hours. And he was getting nowhere.

He woke up on a beach. White sand beneath him. A blue ocean to his left. A dense jungle to his right. 

He first thought had been that he had somehow washed ashore on some tropical island like in those movies, but that idea vanished when he saw his hands. One was black, one was white. He was wearing a suit, too.

Understandably, Ranboo freaked out. He didn’t know where he was or what he was doing there. His one semi-logical conclusion was that he was in Minecraft, but that was ridiculous. Right?

During freaking out, Ranboo had accidentally stepped in the water, which was no big deal, right? But then there was this stinging pain in his foot, and he pulled it back onto the sand. He looked down to see a small rash on his ankle, which was slowly disappearing as Ranboo watched. He watched until it was completely gone, and then sat there staring at it for a few more minutes.

Had he stepped on something? Why had it gone away so quickly?

Ranboo reached out and dipped his finger into the water. Nothing happened for a moment, then it started hurting in the same way, and when he pulled back, it healed the same, too.

“What in the…” 

So. The water was poisonous. Oh boy. This was gonna be fun.

He peered at the water and realized that he was looking at a coral reef. The cyan-tinted sea went as far as Ranboo could see- all the way to the horizon. Below the surface, groups of colorful fish swam around the tree-like corals. It really did look like paradise.

Ranboo noticed that the water was nearly completely still; there were no waves. He stopped as he caught the warped sight of his reflection in the water. He held his hand up to his face as he took in the half-white half-black thing that was staring back at him. He reached up to the golden crown on his head and felt the sharpened tips of it. Three stones were set into the front- one red, one green, and one half-and-half. They matched his eyes, he realized, one of which was green against the black side, and the other red against white. 

The line between the black and white wasn’t a clear split, instead it kind of overlapped and faded a bit in the middle. One of his first thoughts was ‘Hey that’s kind of cool’ which was replaced with ‘WAIT HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?’

After recovering from the sight of his FACE, Ranboo was at a loss on what to do. He could stay there, on the beach, and do… something. Make a shelter? Or he could go into the jungle, maybe find something… or get lost. Eventually he decided to just walk along the beach and see what he could find. 

He hadn’t stopped walking when he saw the two messages in the corner or his vision. He had, though, thought about the possibility that he was in Minecraft, and he had eventually decided that, yes, he was, and if he was proven wrong and was just a total idiot, then so be it. He kept on going forward by the hopes that he wasn’t here alone, there were AT LEAST two other people…

He had been walking for literal hours. And he was starving. Not thirsty, even in the hot sun, but hungry. Just really, really hungry. And he had no clue how he was going to get food. 

He stopped, for the first time since he started walking, and looked around. His surroundings looked the same as when he started: jungle, ocean, sand. Sand, sand, sand. It was a pain to walk through. 

Just as he had that thought, a crab popped out of the sand and scuttled across it, as easily as if it did this everyday, yes, look at me go, aren’t I so great at walking? Ranboo lunged and tried to grab it, but it was too fast and Ranboo ended up sprawled in the sand. He honestly didn’t know what he was doing, why had he thought he could catch a crab? Just why?

Ranboo got up. He had to focus, yes, focus. If this was Minecraft, he was fine. Yes. He knew how to survive. It was easy. Yeah, easy. He glared at the crab, who was still running across the beach.

Punch a tree. That’s what you did when you started off, right? Although Tommy had apparently killed a ghast, and Purpled had done something no one had ever done before, and Ranboo had walked down a beach and failed to catch a crab. He felt a little behind.

So Ranboo went over to the edge of the jungle and was immediately overwhelmed by the size of the trees. He looked at the trunk nearest to him. He took a swing at it. His fist slammed into the tree and he clutched his hand to his chest.

“OW!”

Now Ranboo really did feel like a complete and total idiot. One who thought it was a good idea to punch a tree. He cradled his hand for a moment, then sought out other solutions. He ended up going back onto the beach with an armful of sticks and a few stones he picked up along the way. He also had a few blocks of gravel that he had accidentally picked up.

He sorted through his collection until he found a stick that was long and hard, while also pretty light. Ranboo took a sharp rock that he had also found and started sharpening the end until he had a satisfying spearpoint. He didn’t know how he was supposed to craft, and didn’t have any useful materials anyway, so he would have to improvise.

Now onto the next problem. What was he going to hunt? Ranboo hadn’t thought that far ahead. Well, now he had a spear, and he had to kill something. Uh…

His first thought was fish, but he couldn’t touch the water, let alone go swim out to the reef. Crabs? He couldn’t even catch one when it was right in front of him. Parrots? NO. One, because they looked hard to catch, and two, he couldn’t bring himself to kill a parrot. They had just been flying through the jungle canopy, minding their own business, and Ranboo thought that they were kind of cute.

His eyes had drifted to the jungle canopy to look for parrots, just because he had thought of them, when he spied something else in the trees. It was bright pink, but not a bird, like he first thought, no, it was a fruit. The tree it was growing from was fairly low to the ground, so he could probably reach the fruits, which he now thought might be dragonfruit. He had never had one before, but Ranboo had seen pictures of them before, and he knew that they were edible.

So he went over and picked a few. He used his spear to knock down some of the higher ones, so the thing had some use after all, although not its intended purpose. He brought about five of the pinkish-red fruits back to his campsite (Ranboo was calling it a ‘campsite’ although it was literally just a pile of sticks on the sand).

He wasn’t sure how to peel the dragonfruit, but all of the pictures showed the plant cut in half, so he sought to do just that. With difficulty, he was able to slice it open with the sharpening rock, although it was a little bit messy. The inside of the fruit was pale white flesh with hundreds of tiny black seeds.

Ranboo decided to go for it and bit into the white flesh. It had an interesting taste; a little bit bland, but kind of like a watered-down kiwi. All in all, it was good, and Ranboo was satisfied after finishing the one. He left the other dragonfruit he had gathered in a pile next to his sticks.

While gathering the dragonfruit, he had seen other brightly-colored fruit up higher in the canopy. So Ranboo set out to go and collect them. There was a bit of difficulty where his spear came in handy, and he made it back with three kiwis, a mango, two bananas, and an orange. 

He sat down on the beach and ate a banana and the orange (which he now thought might be a tangerine). He honestly didn’t know what to do now; he couldn’t find anyone, had nothing to do, and was alone. Two of those things were the same, yes, he knew that.

He supposed he could make shelter. But for now, Ranboo just sat on the sand and watched as the sun sank lower in the sky, creating beautiful colors that splashed across the heavens.

He didn’t once think about the mobs. 

Until it was too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI
> 
> Don't expect the release of chapters to be consistent, I simply had a lot of free time recently but might be busier soon, idk. I'll try to post as consistent as I can, but I can't promise anything. Not to discourage you or anything, just sayin'.
> 
> Thank you for all of your feedback! It's my source of motivation and I read every comment! <3


	5. Nightfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note- I AM NOT A DOCTOR. I may have made up some details of the injuries, and will continue to do so throughout this story. If I get something wrong, my excuse is that their biology was altered through the alteration. (I shall not elaborate about 'the alteration' until further into the series)

“Uh, guys?” Skeppy asked. “It’s getting darker.”

The five players were still sitting around the Nether portal, waiting for Tommy. Nighttime wouldn’t have been a problem, but in Minecraft, it could be fatal if you weren’t prepared. Were they prepared? Dream had an axe, Bad and Skeppy had swords, and Sapnap had a shield he had found. No armor, no plan.

So no, they were not ready to fight monsters inside of a video game.

At Skeppy’s remark, everyone started to panic. He was right, the sun was going down fast, and soon they would be surrounded by darkness. Darkness and mobs. Lots of mobs.

“Wait,” Bad said, “the SMP is pretty well lit-up, right? Do we even need to worry?”

“No matter how lit-up something in Minecraft is, mobs will spawn,” Dream replied. “Somehow. It’s a mystery how, but they find a way.”

“That can be your next Unsolved-Mystery, Dream,” George joked.

“So, we should get inside. Right now. Like, RIGHT now.” Skeppy gripped his sword tighter and held it up in front of him, as though preparing to fight.

“But Tommy…” Bad said. “What if he comes through while it’s night?”

“Then he’ll go right back in, probably. It might be safer. Unless there’s like, a blaze following him, but that’s unlikely-” Dream started, but Skeppy said, “CAN WE PLEASE GET MOVING I SEE A CREEPER?”

“Tommy will be fine,” Dream agreed. “He’s a smart kid and he’s probably not even going to come through the portal anyway, we’ve been here too long. We need to get moving!”

An arrow flew past them, bouncing off the obsidian frame, and Skeppy started running, with Bad in hot pursuit. Dream followed and he could hear footsteps behind him, which he hoped was George and Sapnap. He was about to look behind him when he almost ran into Bad, who had stopped with Skeppy at the sight of a zombie ahead of them.

“What do we do?!” Bad asked frantically, which Dream hastily replied with, “Kill it!”

Dream pushed past them and brought his axe down on the zombie like he did with the skeleton. But instead of dying in one hit, it was only knocked backwards with a flash of red, and started coming at them again. Bad leaned forward and hit the undead creature with the blade of his sword, which was enough to make it disappear into thin trails of smoke.

“Let’s GO!” George shouted. Mobs were spawning everywhere, and Dream cursed his previous self for not lighting up the SMP well enough. Although, to be fair, mobs weren’t much of a problem then, but now it was literal life or death.

The group ran along the Prime Path, but they didn’t know where they were expecting to go. A building of some sort, presumably, but there were mobs EVERYWHERE and they panicked and ran, not wanting to risk fighting them to get to the doorways. Dream ran along with the others, trying to stay close to George, because he was the only one out of the five who didn’t have any sort of weapon or defense.

Zombies groaned as the players passed, and a barrage of arrows constantly followed them. Dream twisted around and used his axe to knock one out of the air before it could hit Bad, which was when he saw an empty space where he thought a person had been.

“Where’s Sapnap?!”

The four of them glanced behind them, but their friend was nowhere to be seen. They all started frantically yelling, calling out Sapnap’s name, but no one called back. Their fear was dialed up and Dream stopped, desperately wanting to go back and find his friend. 

He wasn’t thinking. He had stopped, and now he was an easy target. Dream heard the hiss of a spider just as it came launching off of a nearby roof. With faster reaction time than he thought was possible, Dream lunged to the side, landing in a roll. He sprang up and swung his axe around to neatly slice the giant arachnid in half.

Dream was shocked for about one second before he looked up to see his friends in a fierce battle ahead of him. Skeppy was dodging skeleton arrows in an attempt to get closer to the monster, Bad was fighting two spiders by himself, and George had found a stick and was using it as a bludgeon against a zombie.

Whatever had happened to Spanap, knowing his friend, he would have yelled his head off if he was in danger, so Dream had to hope that he was somewhere safe. Either way, Dream couldn’t leave the group to go and find Sapnap. If their previous skills translated into the game, like Bad thought, then Dream was the best fighter in their group. He needed to stay and protect the others, and then come back for Sapnap. He could survive on his own, Dream knew it. He hoped so, at least.

It killed him to leave one of his best friends behind, but he had more pressing matters to deal with. Bad was losing against the spiders. Dream rushed over and managed to cut off one of the first spider’s legs, but the mobs were quick and it dodged Dream’s second attack. Bad was able to stab the second straight through its middle, and Dream finally hit the monster once more and it died. Dream glanced at Bad; his friend was breathing hard, more from fright than from exhaustion, and a shallow cut ran across his arm, presumably where the spider had bitten him. 

There was the clank of blade against bone as Skeppy killed the skeleton, and Dream was able to defeat the zombie George was fighting after two more blows.

“Here,” Dream said, tossing George a half-broken iron sword (he regretted tossing it, George had to fumble to catch the hilt and almost got stabbed) that had been lying discarded in the bottom of a nearby chest. It had cracks running along its surface, but it was better than George’s stick, which he threw on the ground as he accepted the weapon without complaint.

They ran along the wooden walkway, swinging at mobs if they got too close, when they came to where Dream had woken up. Bad and Skeppy, who had been leading the group, hesitated as they decided which way to go, but Dream pushed past them and ran along the path toward L’Manburg. He didn’t know exactly why he was going to the destroyed country, but to his relief, his friends followed him without hesitation.

Why wasn’t there any light? Dream remembered there being many torches around the server, especially in the main areas, like the path, but everything was as dark as night albeit for the light of the moon.

He slowed down to let the others catch up (he was faster than his friends; must be from the skill transfer or something) and saw the glint of shining metal from the shadows. He had to duck to avoid an arrow, and he instinctively wished he had a shield. When he went to look again, he found a zombie in enchanted golden armor coming at him, sword in hand.

Dream startled and jumped around the monster’s attack. It only had the helmet, chestplate, and an iron sword, but it was dangerous with its weapon, as Dream soon found out.

He heard Skeppy yelp and saw that they were surrounded by monsters; all of them were stuck at the bottom of the wooden ramp that led to L’Manburg. They would have to fight. And it would not be fun.

Three skeletons, four zombies, a spider, and two creepers. Ten mobs. Plus the armored zombie Dream was fighting. Eleven. 

Uh-oh.

There was a moment where nothing happened. Then it snapped as Skeppy let out a fear-tinged war cry and charged the nearest mob. The others followed suit.

But Dream had his hands full. In an attempt to get away from the zombie, he had backed into a position where two half-broken walls formed a corner where a building once stood, and the monster was coming closer.

Dream took a powerful swing at the undead creature and put a dent in it’s golden armor, but the zombie was only pushed back and didn’t flash red. You must have to hit the flesh to make any damage, and that would mean Dream had to aim for its face or legs-

The zombie swung its sword faster than Dream was expecting. He was caught off-guard, so as he tried to dodge around the attack, the sword sliced through the air and cut across his shoulder and down his chest, leaving a bleeding wound that stained his hoodie red.

Pain shot through Dream with more force than he had even felt before, and in the same second as getting hit, he stabbed his own sword at the zombie’s face. Headshots must be fatal, because the mob disappeared instantly.

Dream dropped against the wall. He knew he shouldn’t do this, a spider or something else could jump him right there, but he couldn’t deal with the pain. It was the worst thing he had even experienced, physically, and his breathing was short and erratic. He wasn’t used to this; if he had to go through this every time he fought, he couldn’t imagine going for much longer. He risked a look down and saw the cut that reached from his left shoulder across his heart, and although it wasn’t too deep, it hurt like heck. 

His vision went a little blurry and he almost didn’t register the BOOM of an explosion and the surprised shriek that came with it, but not long after someone came and grabbed his hood and pulled, saying “Dream come on! We need to go! Oh, sh- you’re bleeding! Come on!”

It was Skeppy, and he pulled on Dream until he snapped out of his trance and stood up, wincing at the pain in his shoulder flared at the sudden movement. His friend grabbed his arm and pulled him (a little forcefully) out of the corner and back to Bad and George, who were waiting, yet clearly impatient. Dream saw their eyes widen at his injury, but as Skeppy dragged him along they all started running farther into L’Manburg.

Which is when Dream saw the glow of light up ahead, and a figure frantically waving at them from a doorway, yelling, “Come on! Over here!” in a familiar voice.

The group of four rushed into the ramshackle building and the door slammed shut behind them. Dream found himself in a well-lit wooden room, with a chest in the corner and a few beds against the far wall, with a crafting table sitting in the middle of the room. Standing next to the door was Quackity, who said, “Why are there so many freaking MOBS?! Also great to see you all and great job on not getting killed!”

“Not the best job,” Bad mumbled and Dream saw what looked like burns across his arms, but it was hard to tell with his black skin. “But thanks. You literally saved us.”

“Are you all alive?!” A voice called from an opening in the ceiling, which a person was climbing down a ladder. Tubbo landed on the ground, a little breathless, and said, “Geez, I was watching you guys and that was close!”

“Oh my god, it’s so good to see you guys,” Skeppy said. “We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t made this house, we seriously almost died.”

As the adrenaline wore off, Dream went and sat against the wall. The pain was almost worse now, and he felt like crap. Tubbo noticed and asked, “Dream, are you alright?”

“Fine-” Dream started to say, but he was interrupted by Bad, who said, “No, you’re not fine, there’s a bleeding cut across your chest and Skeppy had to literally drag you over here.”

Quackity and Tubbo tried to make a bandage with some wool they unwound (which involved shoving it onto the crafting table to see what would happen), while Bad tried to ‘assess the damage’ which was just a lot of Dream trying to convince his friend that he was fine (he was lying through his teeth and Bad knew it).

“Have you guys seen Sapanap?” George asked Tubbo. 

“No, why? Is he here too?” Tubbo answered. 

“Yeah, we were with him until we started running from the mobs and then we kind of… lost him.”

“You lost him?” Quackity asked, which only made Dream feel even more guilty (Bad felt the same way, Dream could see it on his face) and even tore at his heart a little. He still regretted leaving his friend behind, but there wasn’t anything he could have done, and the others might not even be here if he did go back.

As Quackity, Tubbo, and George started talking about Sapnap and where he might be, Dream told Bad, “If you insist that I deal with my injuries, then you better not ignore your own, Bad.”

His friend flinched, and started to say, “I’m fin-” but Skeppy, who was looking through the chest, said, “He’s got a point there, Bad.”

Dream could now see that Bad did indeed have small burn marks on his arms, while also the spider bite from before. He looked up and saw that Skeppy had a few small scratches and George had a bruise on his arm, but out of all of them Dream had it the worst.

“Hey, do you guys mind if I go into the lookout? Maybe look for Sapnap?” Skeppy asked.

“Sure,” Tubbo replied. “I think we got it here.”

He came over to Dream and Bad, and the former asked, “How did you make bandages?”

“We don’t know. With wool. And a lot of determination.” Quackity looked quite proud of himself.

While the players bandaged their injuries, they caught up with each other. Tubbo and Quackity had built the little base for protection, and just in time, too. They had gone inside when they started seeing monsters, and Tubbo had taken up the place of lookout to see if he could find any other players out in the night. 

Which he did, and thank God for that.

\-------- ~~~ --------

For a moment, all Tommy saw was purple. Violet waves of motion around him, and it was somehow beautiful and nauseating at the same time. It was cool, almost freezing cold, but after the oppressive heat of the Nether it was wonderful. Then Tommy stumbled out the other side of the portal, emerging in a world of green.

Huge trees rose up around Tommy, with no branches until way at the top. A carpet of pine needles was scattered over the ground, which was dotted with the occasional fern or fallen branch. Sunlight filtered through the needles at the top, making a half-shaded forest floor.

Tommy had no clue where he was.

He had been half-hoping that his portal would connect to an already-built one, but of course not, and now he was completely lost in the middle of nowhere.

Tommy stood there for a minute, then sat down in defeat. Should he stay close to the portal, so he didn’t get lost? Or should he start walking, and hope he found someone? As Tommy was thinking, he felt something thump against his chest. He looked down and saw the compass he had woken up with. He had forgotten about it during the chaotic events of the Nether.

He lifted it up to look at the needle. When he was in the Nether, the red point was waving around randomly, but now it pointed in a stable direction. Tommy saw the ‘Your Tubbo’ for the second time and he realized that the compass pointed to the SMP lands, where the loadstone was located.

So, theoretically, if he followed the compass he would find the main SMP, and probably his friends, too.

So Tommy did just that.

\--*--

Hours later, and Tommy was still walking.

He had been following the direction the compass needle was pointing, stopping to rest a few times in the shade of the trees. He had strayed off the path once, because he got distracted, and had to take a detour along a river to find a shallow spot to cross, but other than that he had been going straight.

Tommy had found a small stream and washed the orange slime off of his arms; it had been a very uncomfortable thing to walk around with.

He had seen Purpled’s announcement in ‘chat’ and had been startled, then relieved (that there was someone else here, after all), then confused (he had never heard of that advancement before), then hopeful (that maybe someone saw his message when he killed that ghast).

But by now he was tired, hungry, and bored. He had seen various animals, including birds, foxes, and squirrels. He had crossed a river, several creeks, and a few small hills. Now, to his right, a larger hill with a small cliff about twenty feet high, and to his right the ground slowly sloped downward. There wasn't much to see. Or do. 

Tommy’s gaze drifted up to the sky. It was getting darker. Tommy wondered if monsters would come out at night. If this was Minecraft, then they certainly would, and Tommy would be in deep shit. Sure, he had his golden axe, but he really didn’t want to fight anything hostile after his encounter with the piglins-

A piercing shriek cut through the air, startling Tommy enough that he jumped and looked around wildly, before realizing that it came from the sky. He frantically looked upward and saw flashes of something through the branches of a tree. 

The flying creature let loose another scream and dove through the canopy, scattering pine needles as it flared its wings. A bat-like creature with a wingspan as wide as Tommy’s arms if he held them out sideways. It had blue skin and a pale white, scaled underbelly, with white, bone-like supports in its ripped wings and along its spine. It would make shrieks and screams and whispery hisses, and its glowing green eyes were locked onto Tommy.

A phantom.

Tommy was at first scared, as it opened its mouth and hissed at him, showing off its fangs, and then confused, because he had only been in the game for a few hours and hadn’t even had time to sleep, and phantoms only spawned if the player hadn’t slept for three days.

Tommy raised his axe, preparing to fight, but the phantom didn’t attack him. It simply swooped in wide circles around the trees, watching Tommy. It screeched again and flew back up through the canopy and into the night sky.

Tommy stood there, wary and confused, but he decided to keep going. He didn’t know what the frick was up with the phantom, but Tommy really wanted to find other people, so he kept going. 

Soon he heard another hiss, and saw flashes of more phantoms in the sky. Tommy picked up his pace a little, unnerved by the ghostly screeches the creatures were making. The phantoms were diving through the trees now, leaving little particle trails behind their wings.

Tommy heard a raspy murmur behind him, and turned to find a phantom swooping in for an attack. He panicked and swung his axe around, but the phantom dodged the blow and went sailing past Tommy, hissing as it flapped up to the treetops. Another phantom leveled and prepared to drop down, and then another, and by then Tommy was running. He bolted through the forest, the phantoms screeching and hissing above him, and he would duck every five seconds to avoid being bitten by the green-eyed monsters.

A phantom whooshed by, so close Tommy could almost feel its wings brushing against his spine, and (not knowing what to do) he yelled curses at it as it circled above him.

A small part of his conscience recognized that he hadn’t actually been bitten yet, but that little voice was drowned out by the rest of his thoughts, which went along the lines of ‘RUN HELP AHHH PHANTOMS #*$@ YOU *&%$!^# $%@# !#@%$#&!-’

Tommy's eyes were darting around as he tried to see the next phantom attack, and he noticed that there weren't any other nighttime mobs around beside the hissing creatures behind him. He noticed this, but didn’t think twice about it because he was kinda busy with something else at the moment.

Tommy also noticed a cave set into the cliff to his right. It was pitch black inside, but he favored the darkness over his current situation. He bolted for the cave, and the phantoms all started to scream at him. It was terrifying, and Tommy practically threw himself into the cave to escape.

He tripped on something in the darkness and fell to the ground, his arms reaching out to catch himself but hitting his knee painfully on the stone floor. His axe fell out of his grasp and slid along the floor a few feet. Tommy lay there for a moment, catching his breath from both the fight and also his little fall, when he heard a hiss coming from the darkness in the back of the cave.

Tommy jumped up, wincing slightly as he moved his leg, and reached over to grab his axe, which he could see by the glowing enchantment shimmering across it. He heard the noise again, a low hissing that was distinctly different from the phantom’s ghostly whispering. Tommy held his axe up, preparing to fight, but before he could do anything, an arrow came sailing out of the black and, by some miracle, hit the blade of his axe with a dull clang.

Tommy was running back outside before he heard the rattling of bones from inside the cave, as well as the hissing intensifying as several pairs of glowing red eyes followed Tommy. He stumbled out into the moonlight and saw that the eyes were connected to a spindly black body and eight legs. He could see the vague outline of a skeleton still in the protective darkness of the cave, and it shot another arrow. This one missed by a long shot and Tommy tried to run, but the spider had other plans.

Tommy was lucky enough to glance behind him to see the spider jump, and he swung his axe in a full body turn, planning to hit the spider hard enough to kill it with a oneshot. But his aim was off and the golden blade sailed harmlessly beneath the arachnid, and the momentum of the axe caused Tommy to stumble to the side, but not before the spider slammed into him with enough force to knock Tommy to the ground.

Thankfully, the fallen pine needles and other plants on the forest floor cushion his back, but the spider was on top of Tommy, its legs stabbing into his arms and chest. The spider hissed in his face, showing off its serrated fangs, and proceeded to bite his neck, earning a scream from Tommy.

His axe was awkwardly lying to his side, still in Tommy’s grasp, but his arms were pinned under the spider’s. So Tommy jerked his arms up and elbowed the spider as best as he could, earning enough freedom to swing his axe around to knock the arachnid off of him.

Tommy pushed away with his legs and shakily stood, holding his axe out in the spider’s direction. It was crouched low to the ground, as though it was going to pounce again. Tommy readied himself for the attack, moving his weapon so he could get a fatal swing when it jumped, and prepared to-

The arrow came out of nowhere. Tommy had forgotten about the skeleton, still standing in the shadows, notching an arrow and waiting for the spider to move so it could get a shot off. Its hollow eye sockets stared into empty space, but its head was tilted in the player’s direction, and God knows how it was able to aim, to calculate its shots. It wanted nothing more than to kill, and it didn’t even know why, that's just the way it was, unable to form any higher thought.

The arrow pierced Tommy in between his left shoulder and his neck, immediately causing red blood to stain his already-red shirt. Tommy gasped from pain and stumbled, almost falling over. He had been leaning forward a bit, to prepare for the spider’s attack, and when he straightened up suddenly, the arrow was sticking upward out of the wound. Pain screamed through his body as he tried to move his arm, and Tommy screamed as well. The arrow had hit him at a point where his arm met his body, so if his arm so much as twitched it would send horrid bolts of pain through his shoulder.

Tommy felt the color drain from his face and staggered backward into a tree, where he collapsed between two roots. He was choking from the agony and felt horrified when his arm went partially numb, as though it had fallen asleep.

Tommy was starting to fade out of consciousness, and was only partially aware of the screaming coming from the trees, and delusion made him swear he heard someone yelling his name. He almost didn’t process the skeleton stepping out into the forest, the moonlight gleaming on its pale white bones, or the spider slowly approaching for the finale blow that would end Tommy’s life.

His sight went blurry and this time he was certain: he was going to die, for sure this time, and there was nothing he could do to save himself. Tears of pain welled up in his eyes, also from the thought that he wasn’t good enough to survive in this world, and that he would be the first of his friends to die.

Something swam across his vision, and pictures flashed through his head. Tommy was so out of it, he didn’t fully understand what they were. Dream and some other people surrounded by wooden walls, someone in purple walking through a forest, the blinding white of snow as it fell and a flash of yellow.

Tommy saw the blur of motion in front of him, and thought he heard someone call his name again, thinking he recognized the voice, before he blacked out.

\-------- ~~~ --------

Fundy was… ‘content’ he supposed. He felt oddly at ease while walking through the forest, which might have been because nothing paid him any mind. The various animals he had seen had acted as though he was invisible, or at least no threat. He had seen deer walk literally right next to him, and foxes dart around his feet, and even a snake that had slithered past (which made Fundy jump in fright).

He was nervous when night fell, expecting monsters and knowing he had no shelter or weapon, but as the sky darkened to black and stars appeared, he saw no hostile mobs whatsoever. 

At the moment Fundy was resting against a tree, a small stream trickling below him as he stared at his compass, wondering about the note (which he had stuck into a pocket on his vest). He wasn’t that hungry, he had found what he assumed were sweetberries and eaten those a little while ago, and wasn’t too tired, because he had made frequent stops whenever his legs started to get sore.

Fundy was tilting the compass to see the needle move as a dull form of entertainment, when something swooped down and snatched the trinket straight out of his hands. Fundy sat there, startled for a moment, and then looked over to see a winged creature flying away through the forest, Fundy’s compass clenched between its jaws. It let out a whispery hiss as it flew off, glancing behind and starting at Fundy with glowing green eyes.

It took a second for Fundy’s mind to comprehend that the phantom had taken his compass, his only guide to civilization, and for him to clumsily stand up and take off after it, shouting at the undead mob to come back. His vocal efforts were fruitless, and the phantom speed ahead of Fundy through the trees, staying low to the ground. Fundy was about to give up as he lost sight of it, but the phantom circled back and flew over his head as if to taunt the fox hybrid. Fundy jumped and tried to grab his compass, but the creature took off again in the same direction as before.

Fundy followed it as fast as he could, heading towards the phantom’s screeches if he lost sight of it, and after about ten minutes of running, found himself running up a hill to find a clifface ahead of him, with a dark spot that must be a cave, and a bloody battle raging in front of it.

He heard a human scream and saw a kid in his late teens take an arrow to the shoulder and collapse against a tree, and Fundy was yelling “Tommy!” before his mind could process the two mobs in front of him, going in for the kill.

Without a second thought Fundy ran forward and slid across the dead needles (a move he didn’t even know he could do), ducking down to avoid any arrows as he grabbed a golden axe that Tommy had dropped when he got hit. Fundy forgot about his stolen compass; he had only one goal in his mind now: kill the monsters.

Fundy didn’t even consider what might happen to him in the fight, he was consumed with an instinct to protect his friend (which might have been intensified by the fact that Tommy was a child). He swung the axe up and brought it down, hard, on the spider. It jerked when it was hit, but disappeared almost instantly with a bright red flash, leaving behind a coil of string.

Fundy’s focus moved to the skeleton, and he quickly ducked down to avoid an arrow that would’ve impaled his skull. He started to advance on the monster, but he had to keep jumping out of the way of arrows, and his progress was slow. The skeleton was backing up slowly as well, which made it even more difficult to get close enough to even take a good hit. Fundy tried to make sure that the arrows that missed him wouldn’t hit Tommy, who was partially behind him.

Fundy swung his axe whenever he got the chance, hoping that by some miracle he would actually hit the mob, but the balance of weight on the axe threw him off and he wasn’t able to get any hits.

Fundy might not have been able to hit the skeleton, but he could definitely dodge its arrows. He himself didn’t even know how he did it; it was somehow a miracle that he wasn’t hit. He was so fast when he moved, and after a few minutes of dancing around Fundy was able to get a few hits off on the mob, which ended its life (did it even have a life? Wasn’t it undead?) in a flash of red.

Fundy was panting from the effort of fighting, and he took a moment to catch his breath before he turned around to help Tommy. Fundy rushed over and dropped the axe on the ground while he looked over his friend. There was the arrow, of course, stuck in his shoulder and a dark spot on his sleeve where the blood had soaked into the fabric. The boy was unconscious and pale, and he had an additional bite wound on his other shoulder / right side of his neck. Tommy’s breathing was frantic and he was gasping for air, even in his sleep. There was a compass on a cord around his neck, and Fundy carefully took it off so it wouldn’t rub against the boy’s wounds.

“Tommy, Tommy wake up!” Fundy gently shook Tommy’s shoulders. “Please don’t be dead oh please don’t be-”

Tommy groaned in pain and Fundy stopped shaking him as his eyes opened partially, his face twisted with agony.

“Fundy?” he asked weakly, his usual energy gone. “You’re a freaking fox.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Fundy replied, but he got serious again. “Tommy are you alright? I don’t- I’m not a doctor and I don’t know what to do about the arrow and you might die and-”

“Two hearts…” Tommy mumbled, and Fundy said, “What?”

“Two hearts,” he repeated. “Not dead yet.” Tommy gave Fundy a delirious smile and grimaced in pain.

“Oh…” Fundy had no clue what he should do. He tried to think about anything he had heard from books or movies about arrow wounds, and he thought he remembered something about how you're not supposed to pull out an arrow without proper tools or knowledge or something. Fundy also didn’t trust himself not to hurt Tommy more if he tried to remove it.

Fundy also remembered something about barbed arrows. The kind that once it was stuck in, would cause far more damage if you pulled it out than if you left it there. He didn’t know if Minecraft arrows were barbed or not, but Fundy had an idea and went to grab one of the arrows scattered on the ground. The skeleton had missed a lot of its shots, and the evidence of that was scattered over the dead pine needles.

Fundy picked up the arrow and then a thought struck him. In normal Minecraft, you couldn’t pick up skeleton arrows. Also, the skeletons had unlimited ammunition, but was it like that here? Was it possible to farm arrows now? Fundy didn’t know the limits or workings of this real-Minecraft world, but he was certain that he could figure it out eventually. When he had more time. And Tommy wasn’t dying.

Fundy moved back over to Tommy who was watching him with a slightly confused look. The tip of the skeleton’s arrow was barbed, as far as Fundy could tell, and he assumed that they shot the same kind every time.

Fundy held the arrow next to Tommy’s shoulder and lined it up so that he could tell how deep it went into his skin. About a fourth of the shaft was embedded in Tommy, completely covering the arrow head. This left a long wooden shaft, tipped with white feathers, sticking out of his friend’s shoulder. Yeah, Fundy did not want to try to pull it out.

Fundy looked around for anything he could use as a bandage. He needed to stop the blood flow from around the wound, and he ended up tearing a long strip of cloth off his undershirt. He hoped it would be enough.

Fundy turned towards Tommy and said, “Don’t move.”

“Oh, shit.”

Fundy was debating whether he should try to move the neck of Tommy’s shirt away, as the arrow had cut through it, but he decided to leave it there. It would be more cloth. Fundy put the cloth around the arrow and applied pressure, which made Tommy wince slightly. He then began to tie the cloth around and under Tommy’s arm.

The white fabric was starting to be soaked up with blood, but the flow seemed to be slowing down a bit, so Fundy hoped for the best.

“You alright?” Fundy asked after the bandage was in place, leaning back to sit in a more comfortable position.

“Fine.” Tommy spat, and Fundy assumed he was still in pain. “Do your other cuts hurt much?”

“No, they’re fine.” The bite on Tommy’s neck had a smear of blood around it, but it looked shallow and wasn’t openly bleeding at the moment. Fundy noticed a few small tears in his shirt, but they were only small scrapes.

Fundy scooted back a little bit to give Tommy some space and let him recover a bit. The kid kept eyeing the cave like more monsters might suddenly come out of it, and after a moment of silence said, “Hey, thanks a lot, Fundy.”

Fundy smiled and replied, “Piece of cake.” which earned him a small glare from his friend.

After a few minutes, both players agreed to get up and find somewhere to sleep for the night. Fundy suggested the cave, but Tommy denied that immediately.

As they were standing up, a phantom swooped by and dropped Fundy’s compass at his feet. Confused but relieved to have his trinket back, Fundy put it in the same pocket that contained the note.

“Hey, where’s my compass?” Tommy asked, almost frantically.

“Oh, I have it. Here.” Fundy gave it back, but not after glancing down to see that the needle was pointing in the same direction that his was.

The two caught up as they walked, recalling the events that had happened during the day (and night). Tommy may have exaggerated a bit when he told the story of how he killed the ghast, and Fundy confirmed hsi theory that both of their compasses pointed the same direction. Tommy also pointed out the phantoms that flew silently above them, but didn’t engage.

Fundy noticed that the teen looked tired and worn out, so he stopped when he came to a fallen log. He gathered some sweetberries from a nearby bush and shared them with Tommy, who was sitting on the ground, cradling his arm to his chest.

“Does it hurt?” Fundy asked as he passed his friend some berries.

“Yeah. But also no.” Tommy replied, taking the berries from Fundy as though he was starving (and he probably was). “But it’s also, like, fucking… numb. And it’s harder to move.”

“You don’t think the arrow… cut the connection or something like that?” Fundy elaborated when Tommy gave him a confused look. “I mean, did it hit an important joint or something? Is your arm paralized now?”

“I don’t… I mean, I can move it, only a little bit and it hurts when I do that. Only part of it is numb, mostly up by the shoulder. I can still move my hand though.” To demonstrate, Tommy rolled his wrist and clenched his fingers in.

Neither of the two were very excited about sleeping in the middle of the forest, but they didn’t have any other choice. They both layed down on the ground and tried to get comfortable. Fundy instinctively curled into a ball with his tail wrapped around him, to his confusion and following realization. Tommy fell asleep with his back against the log, worn out from his recent adventures.

Fundy stayed awake for a while, listening to the sounds of the forest, some of which were unnerving, such as the distant howling of wolves. But exhaustion from the fight quickly wore on him, and he fell asleep too, although not quite as deep of slumber as Tommy.

~*~

A figure waited for both of them to fall asleep. Perched in a tree, nearly invisible in the darkness. It was humanoid, but not completely human. They were patient. They waited until they were sure both the hybrid (which they knew was named Fundy) and the human (Tommy) were completely asleep. 

When certain neither were awake, it carefully made its way to the ground. They were completely silent. They slowly moved closer to the two players, and, with natural skill, slipped a folded note under Fundy’s arm. They would’ve just set it near him, but they didn’t want the wind to blow it away during the night.

They turned and went back up into the tree. The darkness wasn’t a problem for them, they could see just fine. They glanced back to make sure Tommy and Fundy were still sleeping; they would really hate to wake the two. One, because it would suck to wake up in the middle of the night, and two, it would mean that they weren’t as quiet as they were supposed to be, so that would suck on their part.

A phantom glided above the canopy, silent except for the gentle flapping of its wings. Phantoms were especially calm and happy when they were near a sleeping player, as opposed to when they sensed insomnia.

The figure nodded, answering a question that had not been spoken aloud, and took off from the treetops. They flew away through the night, following the guidance of the phantom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took so long, I was super busy with school. Parts of this chapter were rushed, and I'm not sure if its accurate or not. 
> 
> There, I've gifted you some mysterious knowledge of the figure. :) Not much to go off of there, but like I said, I love suspense and have this whole thing planned out for the figure.
> 
> \-------
> 
> Also, I have a question.  
> So I've found this fic, and it's awesome, and I immediately wanted to make my own version of the story (but with the same characters and same general plot). Is that allowed? I've seen other people do it, and I think there's some tag or something that I'll put that says 'Inspired by ___'. Am I allowed to do that (as long as I credit the author, of course there shall be much much crediting) or is it considered plagiarism?
> 
> \-------
> 
> One more thing-  
> I have so many gosh dang it ideas for fics or mini-fics, would you prefer that I spend all of my time on this fic or take some time to work on another fic as well? (I'd have no trouble working on two at once, and if you pick the second option keep in mind that it will probably be a mini-fic, whereas The Glitch is an actual fic. Also, you could have a say in what other fic I write along with this one if that option happens. Just sayn')


	6. Midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry this took so long to come out, but I was hit with a minor case of writer’s block, then became really busy. I also took the time to rewrite part of ‘Nightfall’ and fix a detail that had been really bugging me because I knew it wasn’t accurate (you can go and see what I fixed, and thank you MuffinQueen for telling me the proper way to treat an arrow wound).
> 
> I spent a little bit of time writing down notes on the structure of this Minecraft world that I’ve made (it actually has a proper term in the story - Inner Minecraft - which will be explained sometime in the future). I wanted to know exactly how it worked and have it make sense, and my notes will be slowly added into the storyline throughout the story. There will probably be an entire chapter dedicated to an explanation of how the world works, but don’t expect a big reveal to happen anytime soon.
> 
> The time of chapter publishing might slow a bit. Mainly because I don’t want to rush my writing and cause it to be of low quality, and because I’ve become kinda busy lately. I’m sorry, but I will be publishing as soon as I get chapters finished. I prefer not to have the nagging feeling that people are waiting for me, so I hope that it’s okay that I’m slowing down progress a bit. I just don’t want the chapters to be unsatisfactory to my readers.
> 
> (A problem is that I’m most productive in writing from 8:00 to midnight, and if I stay up that late, I seriously won’t wake up in the morning and end up being late for school.) 
> 
> Again, sorry, but this is necessary to write a complete and good-quality story, so I hope you understand. I’m also hoping that it won’t slow down drastically, not at all. Also keep in mind that the chapter publications are not going to be consistent at all.  
> This might change with time, idk.

“Run run run run RUN RUN RUN RUNRUNRUNRUN AHHHHHH!”

Ranboo was currently sprinting down the beach as fast as his legs could manage, almost tripping, as the sand was really hard to run on top of.

He had been peacefully watching the sunset, minding his own business, when he saw the first mob. It was standing idly on the beach, turning its head around to stare at seemingly nothing. Ranboo had started to approach it, not noticing the bow it wielded or the fact that it was clearly a skeleton. It had shot at Ranboo, which caused him to run back to his camp, only to find it surrounded by monsters.

In a panic, he had abandoned his piles of fruit and sticks (keeping his spear with him) and ran. 

He could hear hisses and groans following him, and arrows hit the sand in his wake.

One of them came close enough to graze Ranboo’s skin, ripping through the sleeve of his upper right arm. Ranboo clutched the bleeding cut with his free hand, feeling the warm blood coating his fingers. He yelped as another arrow sailed by, too close for comfort.

His yelp came out distorted, with an inhuman sound to it. Ranboo didn’t have time to ponder this, as he turned to see a spider right on his heels. He thrust his spear at the giant arachnid, stabbing it in the eyes, which caused the creature to stop and writhe in pain on the sand.

Ranboo didn’t stop, he kept running. He was quickly getting tired, though, and he obviously couldn’t escape the onslaught of monsters, who were spawning all along the beach. The cut in his arm was throbbing painfully, and he faltered, almost face-planting in the sand, and when he recovered, he saw a light ahead of him.

It was a little ways up the beach, but Ranboo could make out a figure holding some kind of light source, standing on top of a dune. He then realized the person was waving to him, calling him over.

Ranboo put on a burst of speed, using the last of his energy to try to reach the figure. When he was almost there, he started yelling for help, but the figure ducked down behind the dune. 

Ranboo cleared the top of the hill, looking down to see a little wooden boat, two oars, a lantern, and a scrap of paper. There was no sign of the person he had seen moments ago. 

Ranboo looked around in confusion, and suddenly felt something hit his back. Hard. He stumbled forward and turned to see a zombie reaching for him. Ranboo weakly thrust his spear in its general direction, trying to keep it away as he walked backward.

He felt his foot touch something and saw that he had reached the boat. A lantern was sitting next to it, presumably the cause of all that light. A note was pinned underneath it. Ranboo grabbed the note and began to speed-read it-

_If you’re reading this, Ranboo, STOP READING AND TAKE THE BOAT SO YOU DON’T DIE!_

Ranboo frantically started to push the boat over to the water, taking a second to throw the lantern and spear into the vessel. He was surprised by how easily the boat slid across the sand, which made it much easier to get to the water in time. He could hear monsters approaching, and fast, so he gave the boat one last shove and hopped in.

Ranboo’s foot splashed in the water, which earned a surprised “AHH” from the player. He had forgotten about his aversion to water until now, and the idea of him in a small boat in the middle of the sea suddenly became maybe-not-so-good-of-an-idea.

An arrow hit the hull with a _thunk_ and was enough to convince Ranboo to start rowing. He decided that he’d rather take on the water than the mobs, but that would be kind of hard if he didn’t know how to work the boat.

He grabbed the paddle handles and tried to row like he had seen other people do before, but Ranboo didn’t know exactly how to work the Minecraft boat, and he was too slow with his paddling. He began to panic, as he was still in range of the skeleton’s arrows and the mobs were coming closer.

Something hit the boat from below, causing it to jerk forward hard enough that Ranboo fell forward and crashed into the bottom, hitting his jaw in the process. As he struggled to sit back up, he felt the boat lurch forward through the water. He peered over the gunwale and saw a sleek creature swimming through the water, pressing against the boat. Ranboo saw the upraised fin and thought _‘shark!’_ but then he saw the animal’s head and realized that it was a dolphin.

There were two of them, on each side with the boat pressed between them. They were swimming away from the shore, towing the boat and Ranboo along with them. Ranboo slid up to sit on a board that stretched from one side of the vessel to the other, which he assumed was a seat. He was extremely confused as to why the dolphins were helping him, but he wasn’t complaining. They were fast.

“Hey, guys,” Ranboo said. “Thanks for uh… helping me.”

One of the dolphins stuck its head out of the water and chirped at Ranboo, its face making it look like it was smiling. Ranboo grinned; the dolphins were friendly and their noises were cute.

Ranboo spent a moment just sitting there, growing slightly uneasy at the fact that the dolphins were leading him farther and farther from the shore. To give himself something to do, Ranboo set the lantern upright beside him and rearranged his spear below the seat, as well as moving the paddles so that they were propped on the side of the boat, so as to not get in the way of the dolphins.

While he was doing this, Ranboo found the note on the wooden floor. He picked it up to see if he had missed anything written on it, and sure enough, there was more writing on the back side.

_Hello, Ranboo. I hope that your start wasn’t too rough. To confirm- yes, you are in Minecraft. But you are not alone, as you may have seen in the chat. Several of your friends are here, as well as me, but I won’t tell you who I am just yet. Just know that I’m a friend._

_You are currently quite far away from any civilization, but I’ve lended you this boat so that you may travel to the place where your friends have met up. The dolphins will guide you for most of the journey, but if you lose them, just head south._

_Best of wishes, Ranboo._

Ranboo reread the note to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Well. He was in Minecraft. So he wasn’t an idiot. The note didn’t explain how he got there, though, or how to get out. The writer seemed to be good, as they gave Ranboo the boat and claimed to be leading him to his friends, but they were doing so in secrecy. That was kind of odd; why didn’t they show themselves?

The person seemed nice enough, and Ranboo decided to trust what they were saying. They wouldn’t have rescued him from the mobs if they wanted to trap him later, right? And why would they want to trap him in the first place?

Ranboo stretched his back and groaned. He was sore from where the zombie had punched him, and he expected there to be a bruise. His legs hurt from running through the sand, and he was exhausted. He raised his arm to rub his jaw where he hit it on the bottom of the boat when he stopped with his hand in front of his face.

There was something purple on it. A shiny liquid coated his fingers, warm and slightly sticky. Ranboo was extremely confused for a moment, before the cut on his arm flared suddenly, and he remembered putting his hand over it to stop the blood.

Blood. He had purple blood. Half-enderman, right. That must have been why Ranboo couldn’t touch the water, either. Ranboo briefly wondered what else he could do. Pick up blocks? Probably. He couldn’t exactly try that at the moment.

Could Ranboo teleport? He couldn’t, not officially, at least, in the lore, but who knows how this world worked. Maybe he could. But then again, he couldn’t exactly try right then.

He had nothing to cover up the wound on his arm, but it had mostly stopped bleeding by then. Ranboo sat and watched the dolphins. A few more had come, making an entire pod, and they were playfully jumping out of the water. Their chirps and whistles weren't calming, but it made Ranboo happy just listening to the animals having fun.

~*~

A sudden sound of splintering wood, alarmed dolphin chirps, and the boat jerking jolted Ranboo out of his daze. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been sleeping; the gentle movement of the boat must have lulled him to rest.

Small bits of wood flew through the air and Ranboo lurched forward, almost off of the seat. A section of the right side of the boat was destroyed, leaving a gaping hole. Ranboo frantically tried to figure out what had happened, making a surprised enderman noise. The dolphins scattered, making a small whirlpool around the boat as they swam in circles, panicking.

Something teal-colored shot out of the water, sailing up into the air and arching back downwards to splash into the water. It was long and thin, a stick that split into three sharp points on one end. Ranboo knew enough to recognize that it was a trident. And only one mob wielded that kind of weapon.

Ranboo grabbed a paddle and held it like a weapon, ready to defend himself but deathly scared. If he was to fall into the water… he didn’t want to think about how painful that would be. 

The trident shot up again, straight into the shaft of the paddle. His ‘weapon’ snapped in two, leaving Ranboo holding a splintered wooden pole. 

Oh, why had he used the paddle when he had a spear? Now he had nothing to steer the boat with. Ranboo hastily grasped his spear and peered over the edge of the boat. Several pairs of glowing cyan eyes stared back at him, and they were coming closer.

Ranboo saw the trident come towards him, too fast… too fast. 

He flinched back, expecting to be hit in the face and killed, but he heard a pained squeak come from the water. 

A dolphin had swam in front of the trident, protecting Ranboo at the cost of its own life. It sat there, with the trident embedded in its side and red blood staining the water. Then it disappeared with a few white particles, and Ranboo was crushed.

“NOOOO!”

To see one of the playful, innocent creatures _die_ for him, purposely, filled him with sadness and guilt. Ranboo sat there, staring at where the dolphin had died, and distantly saw the trident move on its own and angle back down into the depths of the ocean.

“NO NOT THE DOLPHIN! WHY? WHY YOU MONSTERS?! NOOoooo-”

The boat lurched forward again, this time hard enough to literally send Ranboo falling backward off his seat. He quickly recovered and saw the other dolphins speeding him out of there, away from the living corpses of the ocean. The dolphin-killers.

He heard what sounded like angry chirping, and saw two of the dolphins detach themselves from the pod and head towards the glowing eyes, looking like they wanted to murder the drowneds, just as they had murdered their friend. Ranboo desperately hoped that the dolphins wouldn’t kill themselves while trying to get revenge. 

He was jolted from his thoughts by a stinging pain in his foot. He pulled it up with a yelp to see a layer of water covering the bottom of the boat, leaking in from the hole in the side.

The boat was sinking. With Ranboo in it. And he couldn’t touch the water.

Yeah, this was going great.

Ranboo happened to glance up and see a distant shape ahead. As he got closer, Ranboo saw that it was an island, small, but land nonetheless. Oh god, he was saved.

“Oooooh thank you dolphins,” he said. “Thank you thank you.” Ranboo suddenly was hit with the sadness of the dead dolphin and the worry of the two who had gone back, but he had to focus on this island right now. The island, not dying, yes, he wasn’t going to die.

Once they were as close as the dolphins could go, the swimming animals gave a sudden push and sent the boat as far as they could up into the shallows. Ranboo jumped out, grabbed the boat, and started to drag it up to the shore. He tried to ignore the burning pain on his feet as the water made contact with his skin, and instead tried to pull the boat up onto the sand. 

Ranboo was able to wrestle the vessel until it was half-way on the beach, enough that it wouldn’t float away. He then collapsed on the sand, breathing heavily and wincing as he felt his skin fix itself on his ankles.

Ranboo got up and went over to the water, looking for the dolphins. They were circling the island, which couldn’t have been more than ten blocks wide and twelve blocks long, if Ranboo was correct on measuring block length in real life. Ranboo counted four, which minus the one that died (a pang of remorse shot through Ranboo), was the entire pod. One of the dolphins jumped up and tossed something above the water. It hit the sand at Ranboo’s feet. A curved shell, which looked awfully similar to the kind that drowneds dropped. 

Ranboo was about to pick it up when something came shooting through the air out of nowhere. It hit Ranboo directly in the chest, causing him to fall over backwards onto the sand. Pain spasmed out from three points on his chest and Ranboo gasped. The trident had embedded itself into Ranboo.

The dolphins must not have killed all of the drowneds.

Pain caused Ranboo to start choking and lay there, having to deal with his chest being ripped apart and his lungs being impaled. His vision blurred and he started to cough up purple blood. He could see the blueish shaft of the trident sticking up out of him, jerking with every heaving movement of his chest.

So Ranboo would die after all.

The dolphin had sacrificed itself for nothing.

~*~

Ranboo didn’t see the figure that landed on the sand, coming from the sky and running towards him. He didn’t hear the player gasp and frantically search their inventory. He didn’t see the bright green flash and particles rain down around him.

He may have felt the cool stinging of the healing potion as it was applied carefully to his wounds, but he didn’t remember it. Nor did he remember the trident being pulled out, or the expert medical care that the figure used to bring him back to life. 

The player sat back and sighed. After a moment of silence, they reached over and grabbed the nautilus shell, setting it beside Ranboo. They really, really wanted to stay- to be there when he woke up- to explain everything so they didn’t have to keep this huge secret on their back. The players had to know. It couldn’t be a secret forever. 

But there was something… ‘fun’ in secrecy. They liked to be unknown; mysterious. No one knew who they were. No one could blame them for anything. That was good. The player found some kind of peace in knowing that they would remain unknown. That was just how they were- a loner. They loved the feeling of being the minor character in the story, but they end up being the most important one in the end.

But maybe they didn’t want to be important. Maybe they wanted to stick to the sidelines, making things happen, and never be revealed. But that wasn’t an option here. They had a job to do. And they knew that they would have to - they _wanted_ to - come out eventually. Otherwise, how would the players know how to get out? How would they survive?

The only player to know how this had happened, and they were the only hope for the others. If they didn’t become known, the members of the Dream SMP would never get out.

They were important.

A main character.

But for now, they would remain hidden. Concealed by the silence of the night.

ᓭ╎ꖎᒷリᓵᒷ

ꖎ╎ᓭℸ ̣ ᒷリ

\-------- ~~~ --------

Nihachu was playing it safe.

She had woken up, very confused, and had just wandered around for a bit. Then she saw the achievements, and started to guess where she might be. She had panicked a little, but then got to work and started to gather resources. 

Niki was in a birch forest, thin white trees shot up all around her and the ground was covered in a layer of summer-green undergrowth. Light shown through the canopy, and the scene was generally peaceful.

It was good that she had found Antfrost, struggling out of a hole in the ground that he said was a cave. He had woken up there, just as Niki had awoken in the forest. The two had teamed up and started to gather things together; sticks, fallen branches, they had even managed to cut down a tree.

That had been fun. They had managed to break a section of the trunk, about the size that a block might have been. Cracks had appeared in the bark, and when the section suddenly turned miniature and fell to the ground, it left half of the tree floating. This had surprised Niki and Ant, then they remembered Minecraft physics and how blocks floated. But that raised some questions, like: did all blocks float (except blocks like sand)? Could they stand on these suspended blocks? What could they make?

But their questions were halted by the oncoming night, and the two had headed into Ant’s cave for the night. Niki had the basic set of wooden tools, plus some sticks and dirt blocks. She carried her load into their little cave base that Ant had made, sealing off the entrance behind her.

“Is it night now?” Ant was trying to figure out crafting, leaning over the table and rearranging various items around the squares. 

“Yes. I could hear something hissing.” Niki dumped her supplies in a pile on the floor, and started to organize the items. “Do you think inventory is a thing?”

Ant looked up at her, thinking. His appearance, like Niki’s, had taken after his Minecraft skin. He was a humanoid cat with a siamese-like pattern. Ant was wearing a simple orange hoodie and dark grey pants, and he had paws instead of hands. Niki was wearing a black undershirt with a sage-green jacket over it, dark green pants that went down just below her knees and short black boots. 

“Maybe,” Ant said. “But it’s life we’re in real life, so maybe not.”

“It’s not completely like real life,” Niki pointed out. “The trees float. Materials drop like blocks. Crafting is like magic.” She held up her wooden pickaxe and went over to a wall. Ant had capped off the two ends so that nothing could come up out of the darkness, and made a partial wall and ceiling where the cave was open to the surface. Niki had been gathering while he built, and she had come back with a good amount of wood and dirt.

Niki swung her pickaxe around and struck the stone, making little cracks appear. She did it again and again until she had a black of cobblestone. She repeated this for a while until she took a break, leaning against the wall of the tunnel she made.

Ant approached Niki, saying, “Here, take this, it’ll make it go faster.” He handed her a stone pickaxe. Niki continued to mine for a while, coming across a single iron vein and a few pockets of diorite. When she came back, Niki was exhausted. It was hard work, mining, but she had come back with some materials, so maybe it was worth it.

Ant had made quite the little home in the cave. Torch flames lit up the single room, with a crafting table and a few furnaces on one wall, with a double-chest on the other. The rest of the cave was blocked off by wooden walls, and the entire space had a cozy feeling to it. There still wasn’t a proper door, instead a solid wall of wood, but Niki could tell that Ant had gone out and come back, because the doorway was blocked off by a cobblestone, instead of the plain dirt that Niki had used.

Ant was fussing over the crafting table, deep in thought. Neither of the two players had talked much, as they were both more of the quiet type. They also hadn’t interacted with each other beforehand, so there was an almost awkward air to the cave. But it was quiet, and Niki didn’t mind.

“Where did you get the coal for the torches?” Niki asked, breaking the silence. 

Ant looked up and pointed to a small depression in the wall. “There was some coal there, and I also cooked up some logs in the furnaces to make charcoal.” 

Niki held up her armful of iron ore. “I’ll put this in the furnace too.” Antfrost nodded and Niki went over to the wall of furnaces. It took her a moment to figure out where to put the items in the furnace, but after a few minutes there were flames in the bottom of the oven. Niki went back down the tunnel to transport the cobblestone to the chest, as she couldn’t carry it all at once.

“So, Niki,” Ant said as she filled up half of the chest with broken stone, “we’ve got stone, so the next thing is iron. We could strip mine, like you were doing, or…” he glanced at the blocked-off wall. “We could go through the cave.”

“I vote staying, uh, staying here.” Niki didn’t want to brave the cave, with all of its mobs and dark corners. 

Ant glanced at the wooden wall again. Niki could tell that he wanted to go caving, to go and fight the monsters and mine for iron and maybe even diamonds. 

“Ant, you’re not going to go down there and fight all of those monsters-”

“I’ve already killed two spiders,” he said, to the surprise of Niki.

“When?”

“I went to go get some wood, and they were right outside the door. It wasn’t hard, really, just a little scary at first, but I think we can handle it. It’ll be fine, Niki.”

“No.” Niki held her ground. “Not tonight, at least. We wait until daytime.”

After a bit more half-hearted arguing, Ant gave in and agreed to wait. They didn’t have any beds, so the two players had to sleep on the hard stone floor. Neither of them wanted to put the torches out and risk mobs spawning. Niki watched the flames dance and spark, causing shadows to flicker in the corners.

She shifted on the ground, certain that she wouldn’t sleep well. But what mattered was survival. She just hoped that she was cut out for it.

Honesty, Niki was afraid.

But who wouldn’t be?

\-------- ~~~ --------

Ant wasn’t tired. He lay on the floor, listening to Niki’s soft breathing. It wasn’t long before she was asleep, curled on the floor. She looked peaceful. Unlike Ant.

He could hear the monsters on the other side of the wood. It was unsettling. Ant was surprised Niki didn’t comment on the noises; the groans and hisses and clanks. The sound of bones scraping against stone, or the tapping of spider legs along the walls. Ant felt his ear flick, which was a new thing that he wasn’t used to.

It was weird, suddenly having a different body. Ant had woken up in the cave, nothing but total darkness surrounding him. There was no light. He could hear sounds coming from nowhere, the deep rumbles of cave ambience that had made his fur stand up. 

Ant had been frantic; he was in the dark and he felt odd, different. His hand hit something and he picked it up. A stick. One end felt different than the other, when he touched it, little flakes came off.

The frightening echoes of something unknown bounced off of the walls, making Ant jump and drop the stick. When it hit the ground, a spark had ignited. Not knowing what to do, he hit it against the ground until a small flame came alive on the end of the stick.

The light from the torch lit up the cave around Ant, the stone walls flecked with andesite and the gleam of iron ore. He was sitting on gravel, which must have had something to do with lighting the torch.

Ant looked down to see fur. He was a cat, a literal freaking _cat_. He had a tail and ears and claws and fur and then he started to panic.

He tried to calm down and think. He was in an unknown place with nothing but a torch. A cave. He had to get to the surface.

Ant had chosen the direction that went up, and soon found himself beneath the blue sky. He had crawled out of the hole to find Nihachu, and the two had teamed up to survive. 

Somewhere along the way he had seen the announcements in chat, and had also come to believe that he was inside of Minecraft. On the Dream SMP, maybe, based on who he had seen in chat.

Now Ant was lying on the cold stone, listening to the monsters claw at the wood, thinking about the iron he had seen in the cave. He could defend himself now, and he really, really wanted to get rid of the noises.

Niki was asleep. She wouldn’t notice if Ant went for a quick trip down the cave. Maybe, when he came back alive and unscathed, she would see that he was right and go caving with him. He could at least go and light up the caverns so no more mobs spawned. Yeah, that was a good idea. 

Ant would be fine.

He slowly sat up and glanced at the sleeping form of Niki. Ant got to his feet, _quietly_ , and padded over to the furnaces. He was completely silent on his paws; maybe there were some pros to being a cat.

Ant took an iron ingot out of the furnace. He then took six wooden planks and took them to the crafting table. He arranged the items to make a shield, holding it out in front of him. It was a little heavy, but it felt natural in his hands, and Ant felt safer, somehow. He took his stone sword from where it was leaning against the wall, then decided to put it back and make an iron one instead. 

Ant had no armor, but that was fine. He hadn’t had any when he killed the spiders, either, and that had ended fine. He took his stone pickaxe and, after a moment of searching, fastened it to a loop on his belt so that it was resting against his hip.

Ant wished for inventory; how was he supposed to carry everything? He took a stack of torches (he had crafted plenty of them earlier) and set them next to the wall. Ant would break the wood with his axe, then put it aside and fight whatever mobs were there, then place some torches around and continue down the cave, blocking off the hole in the wall as he went.

Ant tried to listen to the noises coming from the wall. He could hear at least one spider, two zombies, and a skeleton next to the wood. Alright, four mobs. He could do this.

Ant readied up, preparing to break the wood. He snuck another glance at Niki, who was on the other side of the cave, and hoped that he wouldn’t wake her. He then took a deep breath, axe and shield in hand, and broke two of the blocks, creating a doorway.

Ant tossed the axe on the ground, as quietly as he could, and held out his sword. An arrow thunked against the shield, startling him a little, and he saw the flash of red eyes leaping forward. Ant swung his sword and hit the spider, still standing in the doorway, and saw it fall to the side. A downward stab and it was dead. Another arrow struck the shield, and Ant thrust his sword through the chest of an approaching zombie. He ducked down behind his shield to avoid the punch of another of the undead mobs, then took a swing that almost cut its head off. 

The zombie still lived, but it suddenly flashed red and turned, revealing an arrow stuck in the back of its exposed skull. The skeleton had shot it by accident, and now the zombie started to stumble over to the other mob, its focus off of the player for the moment. 

Antfrost knew that he had to get closer to the skeleton to kill it. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he could see the outline of the mob in front of him, fighting the zombie that had begun to attack it. It only took two more arrows to kill the undead, and its head turned back towards the player. It shot another arrow into his shield, pausing to reload another shot.

Ant took the opportunity and charged, moving his shield to the side so that he could swing his sword in a full arch towards the skeleton. He cut straight into its shoulder, dislodging the arm from the rest of its body and causing it to fall to the floor. The bow was knocked to the ground, and the skeleton was left defenseless as Ant finished it off. He noticed that the bow and arm remained, as well as an arrow that it had been notching.

Ant heard the faintest sound of something clanking, and turned toward it with his shield up, just in time to block another arrow. The second skeleton.

Ant was completely focused on the battle, fighting as though he did it every day. He was about to charge forward again, but another arrow struck his shield suddenly, causing him to jerk back and startle. He whipped his head to see two more skeletons hidden in the shadows, firing at him. 

He was outmatched.

Ant didn’t know what to do; the skeletons were in between him and the doorway. If he tried to hit one, then another would just shoot him. He had to move his shield out of the way when he attacked, which would leave him open to arrows. He could stand here, blocking, for the entire night. Or he could try to wake up Niki, but then she might get hurt, and Ant couldn’t let that happen. He needed to protect her. When had he decided that he was going to do that?

Ant knew he had to do something. So he pushed forward towards the monsters with an idea. He tilted his shield just so, and the next arrow bounced off and hit the skeleton that fired it. He did it again, and again, until two of the skeletons were dead. Then he finished off the other one, timing his attacks to avoid an arrow in the head. 

Ant was breathing hard, tired from the fighting. But it had been exhilarating. The satisfaction when he killed a monster, the flash of red when it took damage. It was almost fun, but he had had enough for one night.

Ant went back into the cave, checking to make sure Niki was still asleep. He took the torches, keeping his sword in hand, and began to light up the cave. 

He walked a little ways down it, placing torches along the walls. He came to a ravine, a deep gorge in the stone, lit up at the bottom with pools of lava. Ant and Niki would have to explore it in the morning. He could see ores glistening in the walls.

But it was late, and Ant was tired. He started to make his way back up the cave, his feet practically dragging beneath him. He did try to be on the alert for mobs, but there were none, so he let his guard down.

Ant saw something glistening in the torchlight on one of the cave calls. A vein of iron ore. Ant figured that he might as well come back with something worth his fight. He unclipped the pickaxe and swung at the stone. 

Ant didn’t register the crunch of his feet as he walked over the gravel, or that the loose pebbles reached up along the wall next to the iron. As the ore broke, there was a sound like rushing water, and then Ant was falling.

He yelped in surprise, but his shout turned into a choke as gravel came into his mouth. He was sliding down something, gravel falling around him, his ears filled with the sounds of rocks hitting against other rocks.

The light from the torches vanished and Ant was left in darkness as black as when he first woke up. He reached out and tried to grab onto something, anything to stop falling, but his claws only pulled on rocks and stone.

Ant felt a bright pain in his arm, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it, as he hit something solid and went tumbling down a slope of some sort. He stopped suddenly, lying face down on the ground. 

His fall was over in a matter of seconds. Ant lay there, spitting out gravel and breathing heavily. His head was spinning and his arm was throbbing. He wasn’t even sure what had happened for a minute; one second he was mining some iron, the next he was lying on the ground, bleeding.

Bleeding? Ant could smell blood, and he pulled his right arm out from where he was laying on it. Ant’s eyes had adjusted to the faint light that came from somewhere above him, and he could see something red covering his fur.

Ant collapsed back onto the ground. He was hurt and exhausted, and his head was still spinning and he was having trouble forming complete thoughts. He just wanted to sleep. He was tired. It was quiet. It was dark.

So he did just that. Antfrost settled into darkness, sitting at the bottom of a cave beneath an avalanche of gravel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ranbooat go brrrrrrrr
> 
> Again, this chapter took waaaaay too long to come out. I am really, really, really sorry about that.
> 
> I just now realized that I didn't proof-read this. Welp.
> 
> Also about Niki and Antfrost- I don’t directly watch them and therefore don’t completely know their personalities, so they might end up being slightly out-of-character. I wanted to experiment by putting them together and see how they reacted. I have no clue whether it was realistic or not.
> 
> I made a Twitter account-  
> https://twitter.com/Vellich39828307  
> I’ll post some random drawings there every once in a while, as well as updates or ideas about future stories.


	7. Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayy I finally fixed _most_ of the italicized stuff!

Phil shook the snow off of his new wings. He was inside of a cave, but the snow had blown in through the open entrance. The soft light of dawn made the frost sparkle, and the air was completely still, unlike last night’s wind. It was incredibly peaceful.

Sleepy Boy Inc. had stayed in a cave for the night, making a fire and living up to their group name. It was a shallow cave, a dead end without any ores in the walls, but it did just fine for shelter. The wind had picked up in the night, bitterly cold.

Techno had made a fire for himself and Phil, since Wilbur wasn’t affected by the temperature. Pine sticks worked well for firewood, and the smoke had floated up outside, due to the slightly angled roof of the cave, which they hadn’t noticed until then. All had gone well.

There were a few mobs, strays, scattered about. But they were few and far between, surprisingly. Phil had seen a spider in one of the trees, and Techno swore he saw an enderman in the distance, but other than that, there wasn’t a sign of any other monsters.

The night had been cold, the chill radiating from the stone and wind howling outside. Techno had bundled up in his cape in the very back of the cave, and Wilbur was, of course, completely fine. At some point during the night, after Wilbur had fallen asleep and Phil was only half-awake, he had brought out his wings and curled them around him in a little cave. They acted like a sort of blanket, and Phil slept soundly for the rest of the night. 

Phil stood and sleepily walked out into the snow. There seemed to be more than the day before. Icicles hung from the mouth of the cave like stalactites, and everything was covered in a layer of frost. Phil could see his breath in the air like smoke. It was utterly quiet.

They were still in the valley, but hadn’t been able to reach the portal before night. They should be pretty close, though, Phil thought.

Phil took a breath of the cold air and tried to think. So, this was Minecraft. How do they survive in Minecraft? That was pretty simple; everyone on the Dream SMP were generally considered professional Minecraft players. Techno was considered the best fighter of all time. Dream was known for his skill and quick thinking. Fundy could code anything. Phil had survived in a hardcore world for five years. This should be a walk in the park for all of them.

Well, this was Minecraft plus real life. Things fell (most of the time). Fighting took actual skill, not a click of a button (they found that out when Techno tried to fight a stray, and Phil still didn’t know how he managed to avoid those arrows). Nothing was pixelated, as far as Phil could tell. There were other animals, not just the Minecraft mobs. Things were different, that was obvious.

So, Phil had to consider both Minecraft and real life survival. Well, one thing for both of them was hunger, but Techno had hastily packed some kind of meat (that might have been mutton, none of the players knew for sure) in a satchel before he left the house, so they were good in the food department. 

There was water too, but there were plenty of frozen streams and ice to melt around. Stamina was like real life, Phil assumed, based on the fact that the Sleepy Boys were quite -well, sleepy- when they found the cave.

The group of three was doing pretty well, considering where they were. Wilbur was doing fine, despite being disturbed by his little ‘episodes’. There had been another on the night before, while Phil was out getting wood and Techno was alone with the ghost. Later, he had described it to Phil, with clear worry evident in his voice. This one had lasted longer, with Wilbur- Ghostbur asking where he was and what Techno was doing. 

Techno had said that Ghostbur had mentioned something that confused him. After Techno had mentioned Phil in his answer to one of the questions, Ghostbur had said he hoped Phil’s wings didn’t freeze like last time. Techno had no clue what he had been talking about, and he snapped out of it before he could figure out what the ghost meant. He didn’t want to ask Wilbur about it, since he was clearly trying to forget what was happening.

Phil was really worried about his friend. Wilbur was acting off, not quite himself. But then again, this was an experience for all of them. They were all scared, even Techno. Minecraft was a game of survival, with many, many challenges. Whenever Phil thought about all the cool, fun things they could do, he immediately thought of three things that could kill them. He didn’t know if they respawned, and Phil didn’t know what he would do if one of his friends died and didn’t come back.

A tiny clump of snow fell onto Phil’s wing, and he shook it off. His wings felt almost instinctive, like he was meant to have them, yet also uncomfortably strange. He took a moment to experiment, fanning his wings out and flexing his feathers. The air was still cold, and Phil shivered. His wings ruffled, the feathers puffing out and making them look fluffy. A moment later they settled down again.

“Huh.”

There was this idea in Phil’s head, and it wouldn’t go away. The question of flight. Could he fly? Phil didn’t see why not.

Phil stood there for a second, wondering where to start. He wasn’t going to go and jump off a cliff just yet, that would end in certain death. But he could try learning the basics. 

Phil flapped his wings experimentally, as hard as he could. They beat the air in front of him with such force that he very nearly fell over, in fact, he did, falling onto his back. Okay, don’t do that. Lesson learned.

Phil flapped again, this time angling his wings towards the ground. Exhilaration filled him as he felt some lift below him, but it wasn’t enough to get him off of the ground. He tried flapping harder, faster. His wingtips beat at the snow around his feet and hit the ground, almost painfully so. Phil stopped. He wasn’t doing this right.

He called up memories of things that flew, of aerodynamics and lift and all that stuff he had learned somewhere. Airplanes; they needed to speed down a runway to take off. Phil didn’t think birds were the same way, maybe it was something to do with engines, but Phil decided to try it anyways.

He walked a little ways until he found a clear section of the forest, where he could see the sky. It would make a good runway. He spread his wings out either side of him, and in the light of morning he saw glints of blue and purple and green shimmering next to the black and grey. The white diamond markings on the tips glowed against the dark background. Phil smiled slightly.

He started running, beating his wings as he did so he felt the lift, that light feeling as though he was weightless for a second, then the ground wasn’t beneath his feet anymore. Phill looked down to see that he had risen a few feet, and was still rising, but right then he crashed into a tree, the needles scratching his skin and the branches tangling in his wings.

Phil fell down through the branches, quite painfully, and landed in the snow.

“Ow.”

He sat up, wincing, and untangled a twig from his feathers. He shook his wings out and a small shower of pine needles fell to the ground. No blood, as far as Phil could see or feel. He sighed. Then stood up to do it again.

“No looking down this time,” Phil said to himself. “Focus on flapping harder.”

He tried again, but didn’t get in the air. Again. This time he started to rise, but fell back down immediately. He thought. And thought. And came to the conclusion that he wasn’t in the right position. He was upright for the first few seconds, but then he needed to level out horizontally and get some speed to stay in the air.

Phil readied up at the start of the ‘runway’. He ran forward again, faster this time, and flapped until his feet left the ground. Then he leaned forward and beat the air, rising above the treetops. 

He was _flying_!

The tip of his wing hit a tree, threatening to spin him out of control and into the unwelcoming branches of the spruce. He beat again, instinctively trying to find a rhythm. He wasn’t doing it right, he needed to figure out the positions of individual feathers and how far to flap down and his trajectory and-

Some instinct gripped Phil, something that knew how to fly, and he was lost to the thoughts of flight as he rose steadily into the air, tilting a bit to turn around. He snapped out of his flight trance and outright gasped. It felt so good to fly; Phil had never felt this way before. Sure, he had been on airplanes, but it was nothing like this. He had complete control, could feel the air beneath and above his wings and on his face as he soared, wings spread wide, gliding.

Phil was up there for what felt like hours, but it was really just a few minutes. He wasn’t too high, just above the trees. He knew that he should be getting back to the little cave; it was already later than he had planned. He adjusted his trajectory to aim back to the cave.

It was here Phil realized he didn’t know how to land.

He crashed through the trees and landed heavily in the snow, in front of a very startled Wilbur. His friend yelped in surprise, and then said with a giddy tone to his voice, “You alright, Phil?”

“Fine-” Phil sputtered. The rough landing had knocked the wind out of him. His black wings were spread out awkwardly beside him, dusted with snow and tangled with needles and twigs. He had a few good scrapes along his arms and a feeling of utter delight. He was doing great.

Wilbur helped him up and strode back towards the cave. “So how was flying?”

“Great. I need to work on landing, though.”

Wilbur chuckled, saying, “I’ll admit I’m a bit jealous. You get these big flappy wings and I get… this.” He gestured to his feet hovering above the ground and transparent look. The two were silent for a moment, then Phil said, “At least you don’t have to deal with the cold.”

“That’s the _one_ upside,” Wilbur said with a hint of bitterness.

They had reached the cave, where a grumpy-looking Techno sat, trying to get the fire going.

“Sleep well?” Phil asked, knowing the answer but having fun poking at his friend.

“No.” Techno grumbled. “I don’t know how you even slept at all, when T-…”

He trailed off, but Phil could guess what he was going to say. He worried about Tommy. And Tubbo, if he was here. Purpled, too, maybe; Phil hadn’t officially met him, but if he was correct, then he was only a teenager. Who else? Ranboo. Ranboo worried Phil a lot, for some reason. All of them did. 

They must have kept Techno up at night. Phil wasn’t surprised. He had been worn out from the day before, and had forgotten to worry during the night. How could he have forgotten?

The three of them sat in silence, all thinking about the younger members of the server. After a few minutes, Techno had the fire going steadily and a warmth filled the small cave. Phil sat down with a sigh. He was sore and scratched up from the test flights and crash landing. He started to pick bits of tree out of his feathers.

Wilbur sat down behind him to help with the twigs he couldn’t reach, and when they were done, Phil felt much better. He didn’t bother to turn the wings back into a cape, instead spreading them slightly to dry off by the fire. The snow had started to melt on his feathers, making them cold and damp. It was not a nice feeling.

Carl, Techno’s horse, neighed quietly. They had tied him up in the cave, just to be sure he wouldn’t run away during the night. Techno fished something out of the satchel, a bright red apple, and tossed it to Carl. The horse needed to eat too.

An icicle fell from the mouth of the cave, shattering into a million pieces on the stone floor. Phil and Wilbur jumped. Techno didn’t even flinch.

None of them saw the figure dashing away, barely more than a flash of white movement on the snow.

\-------- ~~~ --------

Sapnap stumbled back, feeling nauseous. His vision had filled with purple and was now waving around violently. He leaned up against something and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the dizziness.

In a few moments, his head cleared for the most part, and he looked around. Sapnap first noticed the stuffy, hot air. There was no breeze to blow it away; he felt like he was sitting in an oven being cooked. The air was sort of hazy, maybe from the heat, but Sapnap could clearly see the features of the grey framework around him, acting as a sort of room. The ground was partially grey stone, black stone, and purple-flecked obsidian. 

Sapnap was leaning against the frame of a Nether portal. He coughed; the air smelled like a mixture of smoke, sulfur, and something peppery. Sapnap didn’t like it. His eyes moved to look beyond the room to see red walls and a bright lake of lava covering the floor. Crooked, bending paths branched off from the main platform, all suspended above the lava.

Sapnap was in the Nether. 

_Sh*t._

He must have backed into the portal by accident. Now he was in the physical manifestation of hell. Well, his friends had mentioned that the Nether might be safer than the overworld at night. Maybe they’d come through too.

But probably not, considering they weren’t already here. Sapnap needed to go back and help them; his friends were probably fighting mobs right now.

Sapnap hesitated, not really wanting to have to experience the nausea again. Maybe he could just wait out the night in the Nether? But he wanted to be with his friends and in danger more than he wanted to be safe and alone. 

Sapnap heard a stark grunt come from somewhere above him, and he whirled around to see a piglin sitting on the top of the framework. It was minding its own business, fiddling with its crossbow. At first, it didn’t seem to see Sapnap, but it tensed suddenly and turned towards him, pale white eyes locked with his.

Sapnap froze, not daring to move. The piglin froze too, as though it was as scared of Sapnap as Sapnap was of it. Nope, Sapnap thought as he slowly raised his shield, it’s definitely planning on killing me. It’s piglin, that’s what they do.

The two stayed like that, both as still as a statue. Sapnap shifted on his feet, panicking because he didn’t know how to fight. The weight of the shield felt a little bit unnatural, but familiar at the same time. He hoped that Bad was right and that Minecraft skills translated through, otherwise he would have no chance in this fight.

But a fight didn't come. The piglin narrowed it’s eyes at Sapnap, looking like it was inspecting and judging him. The tension relaxed from the mob’s shoulders and it got back to whatever it was doing with the crossbow. But Sapnap noticed it’s eyes kept glancing back, watching Sapnap.

After a moment, Sapnap lowered his shield. The piglin was watching him, but not acting as though it was going to attack. Sapnap wasn’t even wearing any gold. Why wasn’t it more hostile?

Well, Sapnap wasn’t going to question it if it meant he got to live.

He turned back towards the portal, deciding that yes, he was definitely going back in, because he was already sick of the Nether and its heat. The piglin watched him curiously as he stepped closer to the purple swirls, its white tusks gleaming in the light from the lava.

A scream pierced the air, a horrifying sound of agony that made both Sapnap and the piglin jerk in surprise. Sapnap’s gaze turned upward, just in time to see the dark shape coming towards him, and some instinct told him to lunge to the side as the fireball exploded on the ground, mere feet away.

A wave of heat from the blast pushed him away and he landed in a roll, jumping back up from it in one smooth motion. Sapnap didn’t even know he could do that trick. The ground was half-destroyed, fires flickering over the stone and small pieces of rock scattered about. The half-obsidian floor has taken the brunt of the fireball, so not much damage was done to the structure itself besides a few holes in the blackstone floor.

Sapnap looked up again to the white form of a ghast flying over the air. It was creepy, in Sapnap’s opinion, with it’s sad face and white tentacles moving back and forth below it. But Sapnap didn’t have time to judge its looks, for the mob’s eyes lit up bright red and it got ready to shoot another fireball.

Sapnap charged forward, dodging crackling fires and empty spots where the floor was supposed to be in an attempt to get to the portal before he was killed. He felt a sting on his arm from where a spark had burned him, but Sapnap didn’t pay attention to it as he ran.

He heard its scream and dove for the portal in one last attempt. He saw the piglin in the corner of his vision, standing up and alert, raising its crossbow. He saw the purple vortex that led to his friends spiraling in its frame of obsidian. And he saw the black fireball, lit with flames and crossed by rivulets of red, explode directly in front of him.

Sapnap was blown back with enough force to knock the air out of his lungs as he was sent flying back through the room, landing hard on the stone floor. There was the sickening sound of shattering glass that Sapnap thought he might have imagined. Fire burned his skin and hot smoke seared his lungs as he gasped for breath on the ground. His head pounded and he could taste blood in his mouth and thought, This is it, this is how I die. 

A flare of pain shot across his chest and he winced. He was vaguely aware of another ghast scream, this one different than the others, but Sapnap was more focused on trying to breathe. He just couldn get enough air into his lungs; it took him a moment to realize that something was on top of him. But he didn’t have enough strength to push it off of his chest.

Black spots danced across Sapnap’s vision, which was also blurred and waving, quite like the effects of the portal. The heat caused tears to gather at the corners of his eyes and he coughed, his lungs being crushed by the thing on top of him. 

His breath came in short gasps of smoky air, which wasn’t nearly enough to keep Sapnap conscious. Sapnap’s spine screamed with pain every time he took a breath, and his skin literally burned in the fire. 

_Three and a half hearts_ , Sapnap thought as he slipped into unconsciousness. _Six and a half lost._

Sapnap fell into a black void, an entire dimension away from his friends.

\-------- ~~~ --------

Quackity was the last person awake. He, along with a few of the others, had stayed up during the night, unable to fall asleep. They were restless, in part because they were in a dangerous world with monsters literally on their doorstep.

At some point near midnight, there had been an abrupt knock on the door. It startled everyone who was awake. Quackity had taken his sword and opened the door, only to be staring at the face of a zombie. He had slammed the door shut, loud enough to wake up Bad.

At some point, Skeppy had fallen asleep, then Dream, then George, then Tubbo, who was still in the ‘watchtower’ as they called it. Quackity was still wide awake then, and had busied himself by pacing across the small room, careful not to wake anyone up.

Now it was morning, or so he thought, and a look out of the watchtower window confirmed it. The horizon was lighting up, the stars slowly dimming, and a hint of orange started to taint the sky. It would’ve been pretty if it wasn’t for Quackity realizing that he hadn’t slept at all. He sat down, staring out the window, careful not to wake Tubbo. His friend was sitting on a block, resting his head on his arms, which in turn were resting on the windowsill. He looked peaceful, calm. Everything Quackity wasn’t.

His friend seemed to be fine with the fact -the _idea_ \- that he might be inside of Minecraft. Quackity was a bit more reluctant. Why was his friend so calm? Just… alright that they could die at any point in time, in any number of ways? Was he not afraid of his own death? Was he not afraid of his _friends_ dying? 

Quackity buried his face in his hands, his thoughts bouncing around in his skull. He had a headache. 

How was he supposed to do this? Who was devious enough to make him and his friends get stuck in a freaking video game? Why did they deserve this? How would they get out? Were they stuck forever? Did they respawn? Was dying painful? Who would be the first to die? How would it happen? Would they be gone forever?

Quackity put a halt to his racing thoughts. No. None of them were going to die. They wouldn’t even need to know if they respawned or not, because this wasn’t... it couldn’t be real? But here he was, in a house that he and Tubbo built, looking out at the rising sun and the mobs scattered across the land.

The first rays of sunlight escaped over the horizon, their light illuminating the trees in gold. As soon as the light touched the zombies and skeletons, they started to burn. At first it was only smoke rising from their skin or bones, but it soon became actual fire encompassing them, burning until they were nothing more than a pile of black dust.

It was almost a horrifying scene, and someone might even feel bad for the mobs to die in such a painful way. But Quackity had no pity for the monsters. They had tried to hurt him and his friends, almost killing Dream and forcing the players to hide. 

Tubbo and Quackity had just been finishing their build when the first spider came. If Tubbo hadn’t heard the arachnid hiss, he wouldn’t have dodged out of the way as it leaped for his throat. Quackity had jumped down immediately, sword at the ready, and sliced the spider in two. He and Tubbo had rushed inside, locking the door behind them. 

The two had listened to the groans and rattles and hisses of the mobs outside for a while, terrified, despite knowing that their house was safe and that nothing could get them. They had both climbed up to the watchtower to see mobs covering the server. It was so _dark_ outside, darker than it should have been. Tubbo had pointed out that no torches were lit, not anywhere. Their house was the brightest thing they could see, except for the moon, which was shining cheerfully down, as if it enjoyed watching the monsters wander about.

Quackity was glad that they had found the others. If they hadn’t, then they would certainly be dead right now. Now Quackity also knew what was happening to them, so he could stop that annoying worrying about whether they’ll be alright. 

No death messages had appeared during the night, so at least no one had died. That was something. But just because no one had died didn’t mean that they were OK. For all Quackity knew, his lost friends could be cowering with half a heart, gravely injured or absolutely terrified. He hated not knowing what was happening to them. 

The sun was blindingly bright and Quackity had to shade his eyes to see outside. It really was a pretty world. The oak leaves swayed gently in a soft breeze, little flocks of chickens meandered about, a rabbit hopped in the grass. The sky was painted with beautiful sunset colors, the clouds outlined in gold. Quackity’s eyes followed a bee as it flew from flower to flower, loose pollen falling from its legs. It was unusually large. Tubbo would probably love it. Quackity debated waking him up, but he looked so peaceful, and he decided against it.

The land was covered in man-made structures, tall stone towers and low wooden buildings of all sorts. Quackity could see the path that led to L’Manburg, and the crater itself farther over. Signs and posters stuck up in seemingly random places, displaying memes or weird pictures. It was definitely chaotic, but familiar to Quackity, and therefore he enjoyed looking at all of it. It was interesting, seeing the server like this. He was actually here, and the world was just the same as he remembered, down to the finest details, like that hole caused by a creeper explosion. 

Quackity slowly slumped down to rest his head against the windowsill, much like Tubbo was doing, his thoughts drifting off in random directions. Boy, he was tired. Maybe he should have made more of an effort to sleep during the night, but it was too late now.

Quackity was asleep within minutes, his chest rising and falling softly. The morning was quite peaceful indeed, enough to put lively Quackity to rest. But the quiet peace wouldn’t last long, as the golden-edged clouds were gathering and darkening. 

A storm was approaching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was more of a relaxed chapter for me, although I hit a plot snag in the middle of writing it, so I had to fix that. I also didn’t have a third person’s POV prepared, so I had to come up with Quackity’s part.
> 
> As with the plot snag, I had to (and still have to) fix the future plot. (That’s why it took so long for this chapter to come out. That, and I was addicted to another fic.) I have noticed that I tend to improvise and not plan very well when it comes to some of these chapters. With both of Ranboo’s parts, I was pretty unprepared for what he was going to do, so I just winged it and it came out OK. I think.
> 
> I’m a little bit unsure about where ‘the figure’ plot line is going, and their character has gone through the most development out of all (they were completely different in the early drafts). They are my original character, and I wasn’t sure if that would ruin the feel of the story having someone unfamiliar. I’m still trying to figure out where she fits in the plot. Like at the end of Ranboo’s chapter, that part was a little rushed and I’m still not sure if I like how I’ve structured her appearances. 
> 
> Now here I am wondering if Phil’s chapter was believable. Well, I’m not changing it so I hope it was. :)


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